Long haul participation in a distributed interactive simulation demonstration

The Avionics Directorate at Wright Laboratory provided the simulation of a F-15E aircraft in the 1994 Interservice/Industry Training Systems and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) Distributed Interactive Simulation (DIS) demonstrations. The purpose of DIS is to allow dissimilar simulators distributed over a large geographic area to interact in a team environment for the purposes of training, equipment development, and equipment evaluation. I/ITSEC provides a forum for testing DIS concepts. The Integrated Test Bed (ITB) was made DIS compatible for the demonstrations. The ITB is a real-time avionics hot bench used to develop core avionics such as buses, processors, operating systems, and application software. An F-15E aero model is used to stimulate the avionics. The current core avionics suite, a PAVE Pillar derivative, was used to support multiple demonstrations. The DIS software was written in Ada and was integrated onto the ITB model set. The software was partitioned to provide input/output services, dead reckoning of the ITB, truth maintenance of the other players, and weapons. There were two methods used to connect the ITB to I/ITSEC. The Defense Simulation Internet (DSI) was connected to through a node at AFIT, which provided T1 bandwidth. Also, an Ethernet bridge was used with telephone lines to provide 56 Kbs bandwidth. The ITB participated in five I/ITSEC mini-demonstrations. The ITB flew air-to-ground missions, dropping bombs in four demonstrations and delivered a glide bomb in the fifth. Also, the ITB flew against a Surface to Air Missile (SAM) site provided by Amherst Systems. This paper will discuss, the use of DIS for hardware-in-the-loop evaluation, making an existing simulation DIS compatible, participating in a demonstration long haul, and the performance of the DIS software and the communication links.