ANTARES: A Software-Based Tool for Simulating Naval Radar Operations

Simulation is a cost-effective method for training personnel in virtual environments before operating real machines or interacting with real and complex scenarios. Moreover, simulation is also valuable for analyzing the behavior of both deployed systems and those under development. For instance, the design and operation of Combat Management and C4I systems, which are inherently complex, have utilized simulation for early validation as well as for training Navy officers and enlisted personnel.We present ANTARES, an open-source, software-based naval radar simulator. ANTARES is designed to seamlessly integrate with other systems via the TCP protocol while supporting standalone operation through a Graphical User Interface (GUI). Additionally, it adheres to the open-closed design principle, facilitating easy extensibility with new simulation entities, such as naval vessel movement strategies. The simulator was implemented using the Rust programming language due to its advantages in performance, type safety, concurrency, and memory safety. As an initial validation, we conducted a usability and usefulness study with 12 officers and enlisted personnel from the Colombian Navy. ANTARES is released under the MIT license. Source code and supplemental material are available at https://thesoftwaredesignlab.github.io/ANTARES