ASIA , Advanced Simulation Interoperable Architecture, is a European project partr-funded under ESPRIT, which investigated the specification, design and development of a System Engineering Environment to support integrated simulation activities.

THE PROJECT

The goal of the ASIA project was to develop and validate a complete simulation-support environment to facilitate interoperability of diverse simulation tools and allow the set up and management of integrated simulation activities, as a fundamental support to system engineering in complex systems.

ASIA has addressed this fundamental area of engineering with the aim of designing, prototyping and validating generic solutions (platforms) which could be adapted (customised) for application in specific fields of system engineering.

After implementation of a prototype software framework, the ASIA platform has been validated by applications in two relevant simulation domains: Space Communications, at Alcatel Espace (FR) and Road Traffic Management, at the Department of Mobility & Transport in the city of Genoa (IT).

Traditionally, the design process of a complex system relied on the development of a (physical) prototype and long set-up phases. The permanent technological innovation, the market evolution and the competitiveness of todays industrial environment require the system design activities to be highly reliable, quick and cost effective.

In order to reach such objectives it is necessary to validate the technical solutions and the design choices as soon as possible during the early system architectural design phases. This is especially true with mission- critical systems such as telecommunication systems, transport management systems, process control systems, etc..

In any industrial sector in which system engineering teams manage complex systems involving different technical domains, an advanced environment can solve the above problems by providing system engineers with:

• specific tools allowing technical teams to achieve their design tasks such as architectural design, service availability analysis, cost evaluation, mission planning and control, etc.;
• modelling and simulation capabilities: the environment should support simulation activities allowing the designers to assess system performance, dependability and behavioral aspects.

In order to meet these requirements, ASIA has developed and validated a complete simulation-oriented system engineering environment supporting the following basic capabilities:

• definition of info-models, containing declarations of data and objects in the specific application domain;
• system architectures design support, to allow system architectures to be described and simulated;
• simulation architecture design support, allowing the user to define complex simulation structures involving and integrating different simulation models in the domain;
• provision of distributed simulations capabilities, to allow complex simulation architectures to be simulated in a distributed, heterogeneous environment

Providing such capabilities within the system engineering support platform allows for an advanced environment supporting:

• collaborative engineering activities in order to manage in a concurrent way the design of each subsystem;
• design verification activities in order to assess the system feasibility and its performances.

The major difficulties are due to the heterogeneity of the technical activities and their associated design techniques, the discrepancy between design and modeling accuracy of the different subsystems and the communication difficulties among the different engineering teams in charge of developing the specific subsystems.

CONSORTIUM

A consolidated research group with a renowned academic and industrial profile.

• ALCATEL – CIT, Corporate Research Centre (F)
• Alcatel Space Industries (FR)
• Comune di Genova, Dipartimento Mobilità e Traffico (IT)
• SAS, Space Applications Services (BE)
• algoWatt SpA (IT)
• UPC, Universita Politecnica de Catalunya (ES)
• Politecnico di Milano (IT)
• IFAD (DK)