Little by Little Does the Trick: Design and Construction of a Discrete Event Agent-Based Simulation Framework

Abstract

Simulation is one of the most widely used techniques in operations research. In the military context, agent-based simulations have been extensively used by defense agencies worldwide. Despite the numerous disadvantages and limitations associated with time- stepping, most of the combat-oriented agent-based simulation models are time-step implementations. The Discrete Event Scheduling (DES) paradigm, on the other hand, is free of these disadvantages and limitations. The scope of this thesis is to design and implement a library of reusable software components that will facilitate building combat-oriented agent-based simulation models by extending the Simkit DES toolkit. We describe our design of what an agent-based DES implementation framework should look like. We show that the extensive use of Java interfaces allows the user to implement different models and scenarios without being constrained by pre-built components. We also enhance Simkit's existing Sensing model by introducing a Situational Awareness model and a Behavioral model. Finally, we build a small agent-based model using the component architecture to demonstrate the library's functionality.

Open PDF

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Dec 01, 2007
Accession Number
ADA475959

Entities

People

  • Alexandros Matsopoulos

Organizations

  • Naval Postgraduate School

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • C4I
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes
  • Sensors
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Agent-Based Simulations
  • Cognition
  • Combat Simulations
  • Command And Control
  • Computational Science
  • Computer Programming
  • Computer Programs
  • Computer Simulations
  • Computers
  • Detection
  • Detectors
  • Java Programming Language
  • Mathematical Models
  • Operations Research
  • Programming Languages
  • Simulations
  • Situational Awareness

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Agent-Based Social Robotics and Mobile-Assisted Learning in Virtual Environments.
  • Computational Modeling and Simulation
  • Software Engineering.