Reference Guide 1: Introduction
Simulation is one of the most powerful tools for the planning, design, and control of complex processes or systems. Commercial simulators allow users to find solutions by simulating their models representing the real system or entity being modeled. In such commercial simulators, numerous variables and functions are pre-defined to support the users’ requirements, providing the advantage of easy access and fast design for pre-defined types of models. However, most commercial simulators have severe limitations in modeling and running complex real world systems. From the dynamic structural point of view, the methods of adding or deleting a variable or a component during simulation run-time, are not provided because no command in the commercial simulators is supported for such a specific behavior. Were they to provide such a detailed behavior, the number of commands including different parameter formats would become too large and complex for users to easily seek appropriate commands. For example, the current number of the commands in the SIMAN simulator, which does not support a dynamic structural scheme, is too large for users to look up –64 pages to describe commands and variables. Therefore, limitation on the practical number of commands and parameter formats of the commercial simulators constrains the expression of complex behaviors. Most commercial simulators are incapable of extending the problem space or describing models deeper than some fixed level.
To overcome these limitations requires a methodology that provides the flexibility to design, and expandability to explore, the problem space. As a possible solution, DEVS (Discrete Event System Specification) environment is a system-theory based simulation tool that provides expandability with modular and hierarchical features. It offers flexibility with object-oriented messages as user-defined data structures. Based on a system theory called the DEVS formalism [1,2], the DEVS environment offers a library with which users can easily build models in a hierarchical modular way. In fact, the coupled model in the DEVS library is the major class to construct models hierarchically, while atomic models are the most basic classes. Due to the hierarchical property, users can quickly expand their models. Since a message in the DEVS environment carries an object–the data structure defined by the user, information as a message type can be delivered from one model to another. In other words, the size or scope of the object can be determined by the user, and can be different from one application to another, while the DEVS environment delivers the message containing the object from a source model to a destination. (However, in DEVS-C++, the user is responsible for creating and deleting the data structure in the message). The DEVS environment helps overcome the complexity of the users problem. Because models in the problem space can be developed to the depth and scope needed to meet the modeling objectives.
The DEVS formalism is theoretically well-defined means of expressing hierarchical, modular models in discrete event simulation. A DEVS model works as a timed state machine so that the state of the system is changed by external or internal events with elapsed time. DEVS-C++, based on the parallel DEVS formalism [4], is a modular hierarchical discrete event simulation environment implemented in the object-oriented C++ language.