PowerDEVS. A Tool for Hybrid System Modeling and Real Time Simulation.

FEDERICO BERGERO; ERNESTO KOFMAN

SIMULATION-TRANSACTIONS OF THE SOCIETY FOR MODELING AND SIMULATION INTERNATIONAL

SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD

Año: 2010

0037-5497

This paper introduces a general purpose software tool for DEVS modeling and simulation oriented to the simulation of hybrid systems. The environment --called PowerDEVS-- allows defining atomic DEVS models in C++ language that can be then graphically coupled in hierarchical block diagrams to create more complex systems. The environment automatically translates the graphically coupled models into a C++ code which executes the simulation. A remarkable feature of PowerDEVS is the possibility of performing simulations under a real--time operating system (RTAI) synchronizing with a real time clock, which permits the design and automatic implementation of synchronous and asynchronous digital controllers. Combined with its continuous system simulation library, PowerDEVS is also an efficient tool for real time simulation of physical systems. Another feature is the interconnection between PowerDEVS and the numerical package Scilab. PowerDEVS simulations can make use of Scilab workspace variables and functions, and the results can be sent back to Scilab for further processing and data analysis. Besides describing the main features of the software tool, the article also illustrates its use with some examples which show its simplicity and efficiency.