Existing simulation environment for discrete event systems suffer from the lack of portability, interoperability, and capability to execute over the Internet. The first two limitations may result in inflexible models; the limitation prevents a modeler from a large scale compound simulation.
This paper describes a DEVSim-java simulation environment which is an implementation of the DEVS(Descrete Event Sytem Specification) formalism using Java. DEVSim-java is focused on remote modelbase simulation, which exploits a Web technology for reusing simulation models available on the Internet. Within DEVSim-java a modeler can use DEVS simulation models which exist elsewhere on the Internet by downloading from a remote site to the local site. The modeler then runs the models by executing the class which has a main routine. The environment also supports graphical capabilities which enable a modeler to develop simulation models in intuitive manner.
To verify correctness of the DEVSim-java environment, a simulation result obtained from the environment is compared against that from the existing DEVSim＋＋ environment by using a multiprocessor simulation model. Simulation time of the DEVSim-java environment is also compared with the DEVSim＋＋ environment; the former is slower than the letter by approximately fifteen times.
DEVSim-java can be used in many areas of system design such as manufacturing system design, communication networks desing, and parallel computer architectures design. For future work, DEVSim-java may be extended to be compatible with HLA(High Level Architecture) for distributed simulation with other simulation languages on a network computing environment.
