An HLA Compliant Agent-Based Fast-Time Simulation Architecture For Analysis Of Civil Aviation Concepts

This paper describes the architecture of the Airspace Concept Evaluation System (ACES), a fast-time simulation being developed by NASA as an analysis tool for evaluating novel concepts in air traffic management. ACES has the goal of supporting a wide range of studies and evaluations. Researchers will use ACES for evaluating a wide range of air traffic management concepts and technologies. Consequently the ACES architecture is required to be computationally efficient, flexible and modular. At the core of the ACES architecture is the High Level Architecture (HLA) RTI integrated with Cybele, an agent infrastructure. The paper describes how the agentand HLA-based approach chosen for ACES satisfies customer requirements, how an ACES federation operates and provides an operational concept of how researchers will work with the system.