Data interoperability between DDS and HLA through a dynamically reconfigurable gateway

Abstract

AbstractSoftware systems need to be complex and large‐scale to keep up with growing user expectations with ever‐increasing technological improvements. Building these systems from scratch is costly and time‐consuming; thus, the importance of reuse and interoperability is increasing. Live‐virtual‐constructive (LVC) simulation systems are composed of multiple heterogeneous subsystems. These subsystems may have different implementations and designs. In such multiarchitecture LVC environments, gateways are promising solutions to address interoperability issues. In this article, a gateway‐based solution is proposed to achieve LVC interoperability with a particular focus on two standard middleware, namely, data distribution service for real‐time systems (DDS) and high‐level architecture (HLA) for distributed simulation. The gateway is capable of providing two‐way data transfer between DDS and HLA. The design of the gateway adheres to the idea of configurable connectors, which allow users to generate a customized gateway. The gateway is capable of converting primitive and structured data types between DDS and HLA. These conversions are specified by users resulting in different configurations of the gateway. The gateway can also be adapted to different configurations at runtime. This research addresses the increasing importance of interoperability and reuse considering the complex and large‐scale LVC systems. The effectiveness of the proposed gateway is demonstrated by academic and industrial case studies.