The UCEF Approach to Tool Integration for HLA Co-Simulations

Published

July 15, 2020

Author(s)

Thomas P. Roth, Christopher W. Lemieux, Martin J. Burns

Abstract

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) are complex systems that require expertise from multiple domains in their design, implementation, and validation. One cost-effective technique for validation of CPS is the integration of two or more domain-specific simulators into a joint simulation called a co- simulation. Standards such as the High Level Architecture (HLA) have been developed in part to simplify the co-simulation development process. However, CPS co-simulation still requires significant expertise, especially when the goal is the integration of a new domain-specific tool or simulator. The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has released a software platform called the Universal CPS Environment for Federation (UCEF) to simplify the development of CPS co- simulations. UCEF provides two approaches to integrate tools and simulators. The first approach is a Java library called the UCEF Gateway that limits the development effort to a list of callback functions in a well-defined simulation life cycle. The second approach is a Representational State Transfer (REST) server developed using the gateway for applications that can implement a Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)/Internet Protocol (IP) client. This paper describes how both approaches are implemented to expedite the integration of new domain-specific tools and simulators.

Proceedings Title

Workshop on Design Automation for CPS and IoT

Conference Dates

April 21, 2020

Conference Location

Sydney

Pub Type

Conferences

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1109/DESTION50928.2020.00008

Local Download

Keywords

application programming interface, co-simulation, cyber-physical systems, high level architecture, tool integration

Citation

Roth, T. , Lemieux, C. and Burns, M. (2020), The UCEF Approach to Tool Integration for HLA Co-Simulations, Workshop on Design Automation for CPS and IoT, Sydney, -1, [online], https://doi.org/10.1109/DESTION50928.2020.00008 (Accessed October 14, 2025)