ACE-Link - An Approach to Integrating Command and Control Model Architectures

摘要

A software package that provides powerful tools to assist engineers in designing and analyzing complex systems is proposed. This package allows multiple designers, working independently in a collaborative environment, to create a digital design of a process in individual modules, bind them together and simulate their performance under internal and external control. The resulting virtual design is tied to a database of system requirements and automatically responds to requirement changes. System designs are developed as Colored Petri Nets using a graphical editor supported with tools to create, modify, edit, store and merge designs. Other tools help the designer describe the system's behavior and relate it to both objects defined and stored in a database and to external modules from legacy or ancestral simulations. Analysis and evaluation tools are provided to execute large numbers of test scenarios, measure system-performance metrics and identify and report failures and malfunctions. This methodology is robust with respect to describing concurrent events arising from multiple external controls and accurately models the behavior of distributed-processing systems. The design tools have the power and generality to model and simulate virtually all commercial and military processes, including those related to human performance in a combat environment.