HLA Run Time Infrastructure: A Comparative Study

Abstract

Distributed computer simulation systems use a general-purpose architecture known as HLA (HighLevel Architecture). HLA aims to provide common architecture for all types of distributed modeling andsimulations by providing interoperability and reusability among simulations. A middleware known asRTI (Run Time Infrastructure) provides distributed simulation services under HLA. RTI offers acommunication framework which is necessary for federates to interact during simulation process.Many RTI implementations are available commercially and are open source to achieve reusability andinteroperability by implementing HLA. However, functionality and performance of RTI is based on itsstructure. This review presents the performance analysis of multiple RTI implementations, so that thebest suitable RTI can be selected for a given simulation scenario and provides the structural comparisonof central and service distributed RTI. It also presents the performance analysis of multiple RTIimplementations and provides the structural comparison of CeRTI (Central Run Time Infrastructure)and SDRTI (Service Distributed Run Time Infrastructure). Many simulations use HLA, and RTI as basicpart of these simulations. This comparative study describes characteristics of different RTIs, theircomparisons and implementations that will help the reader to select suitable RTI according to environmentand requirements.