Synchronization in federation community networks

A large scale High Level Architecture (HLA)-based simulation can be constructed using a network of simulation federations to form a federation community. This effort is often for the sake of enhancing scalability, interoperability, composability and enabling information security. Synchronization mechanisms are essential to coordinate the execution of federates and event transmissions across the boundaries of interlinked federations. We have developed a generic synchronization mechanism for federation community networks with its correctness mathematically proved. The synchronization mechanism suits various types of federation community network and supports the reusability of legacy federates. It is platform-neutral and independent of federate modeling approaches. The synchronization mechanism has been evaluated in the context of the Grid-enabled federation community approach, which allows simulation users to benefit from both Grid computing technologies and the federation community approach. A series of experiments has been carried out to validate and benchmark the synchronization mechanism. The experimental results indicate that the proposed mechanism provides correct time management services to federation communities. The results also show that the mechanism exhibits encouraging performance in terms of synchronization efficiency and scalability. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.