A New Modeling Interface for Simulators Implementing the Discrete Event System Specification

Abstract

The Discrete Event System Specification (DEVS) offers a unique modeling interface that is often perplexing to modelers more familiar with other simulation paradigms. Recent advances in the use of super dense time for discrete event simulation offer an opportunity to recast the traditional interface into a form less confounding for new users. The new interface proposed here allows a natural progression from a message oriented approach to modeling to the familiar DEVS approach. The proposed approach retains the expressive power of the DEVS formalism, and in this sense represents a simple repackaging of the DEVS approach into a more intuitively appealing form.