Densifying the sparse cloud SimSaaS: The need of a synergy among agent-directed simulation, SimSaaS and HLA

TL;DR

This paper reviews the integration challenges of simulation software, cloud computing, HLA standards, and multi-agent systems, highlighting the need for synergistic approaches to enhance simulation interoperability and effectiveness.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive literature review and taxonomy that identify gaps and future research directions in combining agent-directed simulation, SimSaaS, and HLA.

Findings

Identifies a lack of integration among simulation, cloud, HLA, and multi-agent systems.

Provides a taxonomy and research agenda for future work.

Highlights the importance of synergy among these technologies.

Abstract

Modelling & Simulation (M&S) is broadly used in real scenarios where making physical modifications could be highly expensive. With the so-called Simulation Software-as-a-Service (SimSaaS), researchers could take advantage of the huge amount of resource that cloud computing provides. Even so, studying and analysing a problem through simulation may need several simulation tools, hence raising interoperability issues. Having this in mind, IEEE developed a standard for interoperability among simulators named High Level Architecture (HLA). Moreover, the multi-agent system approach has become recognised as a convenient approach for modelling and simulating complex systems. Despite all the recent works and acceptance of these technologies, there is still a great lack of work regarding synergies among them. This paper shows by means of a literature review this lack of work or, in other words, the sparse Cloud SimSaaS. The literature review and the resulting taxonomy are the main contributions of this paper, as they provide a research agenda illustrating future research opportunities and trends.