Development of an information system for energy modelling

Abstract

The High Level Architecture (HLA) constitutes a modern approach to the distributed simulation

of complex systems. With HLA, computer simulations are able to publish information between

one another and synchronize actions without the need for similar computing platforms. Communication between the simulations is regulated by a Run-time Infrastructure (RTI). In this

project, the RTI software Portico was studied for data exchange between federates, a member

of a federation modelling a single entity, representing one platform or an aggregate simulation.

Objects and Interactions are methods for data exchange; to send data from one federate to

another. The main task of this project is to investigate the time required for Portico to send

objects and interactions with varying number of attributes and parameters. It is achieved by

measuring the duration for a publishing federate to send a message till the subscribing federate

receives the messages. This report presents the benchmark design, test approach, results

collected and data analysis from the evaluation of the two methods used for sending messages.

Through the experiments, it was discovered the objects have better performance over

interactions in terms of the duration for the receiving federate to receive all messages and also

the total duration; starting from the moment the first message is sent from the sending

federate until the subscribing federate receives all the messages. With reference to the Electric

Vehicle (EV) application, sending messages as objects are recommended for better performance.

Backed by observations from the data collected, sending messages as objects reported

higher performance over interactions.