Grid Services for HLA-Based Distributed Simulation Frameworks

Problem Solving Environments offer an integrating approach for constructing and running complex systems and components, such as distributed simulation and decision support systems. New distributed infrastructures like the Grid support the access to a large variety of core services and resources in a secure environment. In this paper we propose an approach to Grid access for interactive Problem Solving Environments built on top of the High Level Architecture (HLA), a mature distributed simulation framework. This approach is based on a set of Grid Services which allow the setup and interactive steering of complex Grid applications consisting of modules for simulation and visualization. We discuss a three-level approach to the problem. In the first step we focus on discovery of HLA Runtime Infrastructure (RTI) processes that coordinate distributed components of an interactive application. Next we investigate efficient Grid-based data transfer protocols as a promising alternative for current RTI communication. Finally, we will completely replace RTI by Grid technology mechanisms. As a proof-of-concept example, we use the CrossGrid biomedical simulation application, which requires near real time steering of simulation parameters during runtime of the simulation running on the Grid.