Randy Saunders
Phone: +1 240 228 3861
Email: rsaunders@ieee.org

Area:
East Coast

Randy Saunders is a Principal Staff Engineer at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. He has over 20 years of experience in the design, implementation, and integration of high-fidelity simulations for military and business customers. He received his M.S. degrees in Engineering from Harvey Mudd College in 1980 and in Computer Science from the University of Southern California in 1985. Mr. Saunders has been involved in distributed simulation standardization since the first DIS Workshop, both DIS and HLA standards committees, and as a member of the SISO Standards Activities Committee. He is presently a vice-chair of the HLA Evolved Product Development Group. He joined APL in 2001.

IEEE 1516 – Modeling and Simulation High Level Architecture
The IEEE 1516 series of specifications for the Modeling & Simulation High Level Architecture (HLA) was originally approved in Fall 2000.  The HLA provides a common architecture of distributed modeling and simulation, linking simulations and interfaces to live systems, collectively known as federates.  Four Standards define the HLA:

o        HLA Framework and Rules (IEEE Std. 1516)—A set of ten rules, five applying to federates and five applying to federations, that together ensure proper interaction and define the responsibilities of federates and federations.

o        HLA Federate Interface Specification (IEEE Std. 1516.1)—A specification of the services and interfaces that a runtime infrastructure (RTI) must implement to ensure the correct operation of federations and the callback functions that federates must provide. The Federate Interface Specification also includes language-specific application programming interfaces (APIs) for services and callbacks.

o        HLA Object Model Template (IEEE Std. 1516.2)—A template that federates can use to specify their capabilities to exchange data (known as a simulation object model, or SOM), and federations can use to specify the data to be exchanged during federation execution (known as a federation object model, or FOM).  The template also supports federation agreements such as transportation types, switches, and user-defined tags.

o        Recommended Practice for HLA Federation Development and Execution Process (FEDEP), (IEEE Std. 1516.3).  The processes and procedures that should be followed by users of the HLA to develop and execute federations. This recommended practice is not intended to replace low-level management and systems engineering practices native to HLA user organizations, but is rather intended as a higher-level framework into which such practices can be integrated and tailored for specific uses.
 

This talk provides an overview of the HLA and the FEDEP as well as a history of their development.