CS 501 Software Engineering: Projects -- Legal Information Institute

CS 501
Software Engineering
Spring 2003

Project Concepts

HLA EPOCHS

Client

Ken Hopkinson: Computer Science Graduate Student - hopkik@cs.cornell.edu
Renan Giovanini: Visiting Electrical Engineering Graduate Student - rg228@cornell.edu
Xiaoru Wang: Visiting Professor of Electrical Engineering - xw44@cornell.edu

Project outline

The electric power grid has been traditionally made up of autonomous equipment that take action based on purely local information. The system works well in many cases, but it has definite limitations when reacting to conditions or taking actions that affect large portions of the system. There is an increasing level of interest in using networked communication to improve the efficiency and reliability of the electric power grid, but up until now there has not been a simulation platform available to test its potential benefits and consequences.

EPOCHS, the Electric POwer and Communication syncHronizing Simulator, is a new simulation platform allowing users to create scenarios using agents that interact with an environment consisting of both networked and electric power components. The agents receive a combined world view, but, in reality, the EPOCHS system makes use of commercial and high-quality research software to simulate different parts of that world. That is, EPOCHS uses UC Berkeley's NS2 network simulator for all communication, Mantoba-HVDC's PSCAD/EMTDC for small-scale power systems in high detail, and GE's PSLF for larger scale power systems at a medium level of detail. EPOCHS also makes use of a simple agent system that we created that allows users to create autonomous units that interact with their environment. Finally, all of the aforementioned components are linked together through a central run-time infrastructure (RTI) that essentially synchronizes timing and facilitates message passing.

Each piece of commercial/research software has a component stub that can halt its progress at a specified simulation time and interact with the RTI. The illusion of a combined environment is maintained by halting simulation progress at periodic intervals and allowing inter-simulation message passing to take place. We have a working prototype of this system that we are readying for public release. The current system works, but it does so in way that is not compliant with the High Level Architecture (HLA), the IEEE standard method for combining simulation systems. We would like to construct a combined system, based on the current platform, that complies with the HLA. We feel that this will benefit us in two ways. First, it will allow benchmark performance comparisons between the standard and non-standard versions of the platform. Second, many users are likely to be more willing to try and add to the system if it is compliant with the HLA standard. The HLA EPOCHS system will be released to the public when it is completed.