A Formal Representation of Hybrid Mobile Components

摘要

The Heterogeneous Flow System Specification (HFSS) is a modeling formalism that represents hybrid simulation components in a modular and hierarchical form. The HFSS formalism exploits the hierarchical aspects of modeling by permitting the representation of dynamic structure components. An important type of structural change involves the migration of a component between two models. This type of component is called a mobile component. Component mobility provides a natural representation for many complex systems composed of dynamic entities that move between places, providing a representation that structurally mimics the reality. The author identifies the key operations to support component mobility-namely, the ability to remove a component; transmit the component through a channel, possibly with some time delay; and restore the component at the destination. The author shows how mobile components can be used to represent mobile agents, a network technology that involves the migration of software units between computers through a computer network.