Implementation of an Intelligent HLA-Compliant Application Layer Gateway for Real-Time Flight Simulation

Abstract

This paper describes the implementation of an intelligent application layer gateway for the traditional training simulator to connect with other simulators using the High Level Architecture (HLA). The HLA is the latest open distributed interactive simulation standard developed by the Defense Modeling and Simulation Office of the US Department of Defense. To reap the full benefits of simulation interoperability and reusability in the near-term, it isimportant to quickly transit the legacy training simulators to compliant with the HLA. However, the programming philosophy between traditional training simulator and HLA-compliant simulator is different. To shorten the system rebuild time and avoid altering the original functions of the simulator, the proposed application layer gateway handles all the run-time infrastructure services within the HLA and communicates with the simulator by using the shared memory. To verify the feasibility of the proposed intelligent gateway and its performance, a real-time flight platform was developed. The platform includes a real-time flight model, a software control panel and an image generation system. The experimental results showed that our approach is workable and practical.