SBIR-STTR Award

The current generation of executable architecture tools is based upon a monolithic design that does not accommodate modularity and thus forces users to make design and analysis trade-offs based upon the capabilities of the single tool that best suites their particular requirements. Expand proposes to investigate the feasibility of creating tools with interchangeable components, allowing analysts to select the most appropriate combination of features extracted from several tools. The resulting virtual tool will provide performance optimized for a specific task. Two major components are investigated: the design language and the execution engine. The Unified Modeling Language (UML) and the execution engine of CPN Tools will be investigated as replaceable components. Verification and validation of the approach will be performed by integrating these components with Visual Simulation Objects (VSO), a general-purpose modeling and simulation tool kit developed by Expand. Interoperability among tools using module interconnection is an extension of the basic concept of interoperability among simulations, which has resulted in the development of the High Level Architecture specification and application tools that support it. Modular tools can provide analysts with greater power to investigate the dynamic properties of complex systems and operations by providing multiple, independent views of the same architecture

The current generation of modeling and simulation tools is inadequate for the long-term needs of the U.S. Department of Defense. Several commercially-developed tools are available to create simulations of warfighting events, but do not provide a capability of creating Department of Defense Architecture Framework (DoDAF) products that describe the event. Likewise, tools that support the DoDAF do not provide all of the simulation capabilities need to evaluate live, constructive and virtual (LCV) warfighting events. Visual Simulation Objects (VSO) has been developed over the past five years primarily as an architecture tool. However, it has some features normally associated with simulation tools, including a High Level Architecture (HLA) interface. The proposed research and development investigation will build upon the Phase I results to add advanced simulation capabilities to VSO, including the integration of VSO with commercial, high-resolution 3-D graphics programs, an interface to generate simulations from warfighting architectures presented in the Unified Modeling Language (UML), analysis tools the help analysts verify and validate architectures and simulations. Changes will also be VSO to bring it into compliance with the requirements of the Core Architecture Data Model (CADM) and, as it develops, DoDAF II.

Keywords:
Modeling And Simulation, Executable Architecture, Architecture Framework, Computer Aided Tools, Colored Petri Nets, Visualization, Verification And Va