Automated Interoperability Testing System

Standardized protocols and technical advances, such as the High Level Architecture (HLA), have made simulation a powerful tool for maintaining military readiness through mission planning and rehearsal, force structure analysis, weapon system acquisition,system testing and evaluation, and training. The HLA provides a standard distributed simulation operating environment that, with federation development and execution expertise, can be used to achieve interoperability among simulations. Key factors forinteroperability, such as data model semantics and model behavior are, by design, entirely unaddressed by the HLA standards, so it is necessary to capture them in separate federation agreements. Despite the criticality of federation interoperability toachieving simulation objectives, interoperability testing remains a largely manual and even ad hoc process, and there is no systematic method for capturing and ensuring compliance with federation agreements. Under this SBIR effort Virtual TechnologyCorporation (VTC) will develop the software architecture, process, and support tools to provide automated testing and verification of candidate federates for acceptance into HLA-based federations. This will enable significantly greater utility fromsimulation, significantly reduce the time and effort needed for federation integration and testing, and greatly facilitate reuse and composability of simulation elements, benefiting all programs that use distributed simulation. Development of automatedinteroperability testing tools and technologies will provide a number of benefits for DoD simulation users. This research will significantly improve the efficiency and effectiveness of interoperability testing for simulations, reducing the time and effort(or cost) associated with integration. This will in turn yield greater interoperability and integration of simulations into cohesive federations and will allow greater efforts to be applied toward running the simulations and gaining the desired resultsfrom the simulations. This research will also enhance interoperability for simulation components, and thereby increase reuse and composability. Ultimately this will increase the utility of simulation to support DoD requirements for training, analysis,acquisition support, and other applications. This technology can provide significant benefits and return on investment for programs such as Joint Strike Fighter and Navy Aviation Simulation Master Plan that rely heavily on simulation to achieve programobjectives.