Engineering systems by combining BPMN and HLA-based distributed simulation

The increasing complexity of modern Large-Scale systems and System-of-Systems (SoSs) makes their design and development extremely challenging. To face this difficulty new Modeling and Simulation techniques, methods, and tools are emerging and some of them take advantage of distributed simulation environments. In this context, the IEEE 1516-2010 - High Level Architecture (HLA) is a well-known and accepted standard. However, the HLA standard does not provide any graphical representation for specifying how a simulation component (called federate) acts and interacts in a distributed simulation (called federation). To fill this lack, the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) standard could represent a viable solution, since it offers a standardized graphical notation based on a flowcharting technique that allows developers to easily specify the behavioral view of such a system in terms of business processes. The paper presents an integration between the BPMN and HLA standards aimed at defining and managing a system through HLA in a graphical way. This study analyzes the theoretical issues behind their integration and explores two aspects on how to describe both a federate and a federation through BPMN concepts.