Man-in-the-Loop (MITL)/Hardware in the Loop (HWIL) simulation environments have become invaluable for maturing Warfighter capabilities and significantly reduce the time, risk, and cost associated with evolving and transitioning new technologies. However, current laboratory synthetic battlespace environments do not have the flexibility and fidelity to digitally simulate critical communication architectures, protocols, and effects. Increasingly, programs such as Joint Distributed Engineering Plant (JDEP) are using simulation environments to perform a variety of tasks from requirements analysis and concept evaluation to testing and evaluation. As simulations become more widely used to support the full acquisition life-cycle, through simulation based acquisition, the importance of realistically modeling communications effects is becoming increasingly critical. VTC proposes to define a robust architecture for modeling communications systems and to design and prototype an HLA-based Link 16 Communications Server. The design of these tools will be based upon a detailed understanding of the requirements for modeling Link 16; DoD standards such as HLA to ensure interoperability with emerging simulation environments such as Joint Synthetic Battlespace (JSB), Joint Virtual Battlespace (JVB), and Joint Battlefield Experiment (JBE); and an architecture to support a seamless integration into the core JDEP Infrastructure.
Benefits: The resulting technology will provide the Air Force with a robust set of components, as well as an innovative and commercially viable product that meets the communication system modeling requirements to support a wide-range of requirements across the modeling and simulation community. Our Proposed Simulation Communication Architecture and Link 16 server will provide a number of important benefits to DoD simulation users, such as: reduced cost by reducing the need for real Link 16 hardware; a common framework for representing networked communications in distributed HLA-based simulation environments; a standard simulated representation of Link 16; a reliable communication model for exploring enhancements to tactical networks, such as Link 16, and for evaluating the capabilities of future communication systems; support for multiple levels of fidelity to meet a wide-range of requirements; performance scalability by enabling multiple parallelized Communication Servers to be instantiated within an HLA Federation; a standardized interface (FOM) for Link 16 for HLA.
Keywords: Time Critical Targeting Link 16 Simulation HWIL Simulations High Level Architecture Joint Distributed Engineering Plant (JDEP) Situation Awareness Common Operating Picture (COP) Low Observable
