The High Level Architecture and beyond: technology challenges

The High Level Architecture (HLA) provides the specification of a software architecture for distributed simulation. The baseline definition of the HLA includes the HLA Rules, The HLA Interface Specification, and the HLA Object Model Template. The HLA Rules are a set of 10 basic rules that define the responsibilities and relationships among the components of an HLA federation. The HLA Interface Specification provides a specification of the functional interfaces between HLA federates and the HLA Runtime Infrastructure. The HLA OMT provides a common presentation format for HLA Simulation and Federation Object Models. The HLA was developed over the past three years. It is in the process of being applied with simulations developed for analysis, training and test and evaluation and incorporated into industry standards for distributed simulation by both the Object Management Group and the IEEE. This paper provides a discussion of key areas where there are technology challenges in the future implementation and application of the HLA.