OpenDDS Middleware Provides Scalable, Reliable, and Cost-Effective Solution for Complex Naval Air Simulation System
When the Naval Air Systems Command needed a reliable communications system that could scale to accommodate several hundred participants, OpenDDS middleware and Object Computing's engineering team delivered.
The Client
The Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) delivers advanced, integrated air warfare capabilities to ensure that the U.S. Navy always has a tactical advantage in combat situations. NAVAIR builds highly specialized naval aviation solutions for a variety of national defense scenarios.
The Project
The Joint Simulation Environment (JSE) is a government-designed and built immersive virtual simulation supporting 5th-generation mission systems Research Development Test & Evaluation (RDT&E). The architecture was designed to support the expansion of the JSE over time.
Our Contribution
We provided engineering support facilitating integration and optimization of OpenDDS middleware technology into simulation system component.
The Challenge
The NAVAIR team needed a reliable Ethernet transport solution that could scale to accommodate several hundred participants and run simulation models seamlessly at rates up to 120 Hz.
They considered a commercially-licensed DDS technology that had been used on small-scale projects in the past. However, in calculating the licensing costs to scale across all of their teams, they quickly determined that the product was prohibitively expensive.
Another option was to use internally developed transports, but they found that the necessary funding and manpower to customize and support a full-feature set of those transports was lacking.
While OpenDDS technology may not enable all of the features and scalability NAVAIR sought, they chose to invest in OpenDDS development rather than enter into an ongoing license with a commercial middleware vendor.
The Solution
Small groups within the company already used OpenDDS technology in their projects. Those applications successfully published and subscribed to small sets of common messages with common QoS policies.
In their evaluation of OpenDDS middleware as a solution, the NAVAIR team found that it fulfilled many of their requirements, including the following:
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Messages are easy to define, update, and document.
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Setting up communication between clients is easy.
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Transient messages, QoS types, and extensibility provide useful functionality and easy code integration.
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Dynamic topic capability can be achieved with a customized header.
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The transport provides a solid foundation for customization.
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They could share code and ensure consistency across internal development teams.
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No ongoing licensing costs.
"Even if we had to fund development of an open source transport for several years, overall it would still be a huge win for us. Once reliability and the features we wanted existed in the transport, we could stand down funding and continue using it without additional costs. Further, since others contribute to the code base, we continue benefiting from improvements without direct development or support costs."
– NAVAIR representative
OBJECT COMPUTING SUPPORT BOLSTERS PERFORMANCE AND CONFIDENCE
Object Computing's engineering team stepped in to help NAVAIR customize and scale the technology to fulfill complex and specific national defense purposes.
Our experts made on-site visits, shared code, developed solutions for issues as they arose, and added new functionality, including enhanced CMake integration, configuration file options, XTypes, and dynamic data.
OUR CONTRIBUTION
We provided engineering support facilitating integration and optimization of OpenDDS middleware technology into simulation system component.
OUTCOMES ENGINEERED
SystemS running at scale
- Solution is deployed independently on multiple networks and instantiations
- 128 computers with services constantly running OpenDDS participants
- Up to 330 participants run concurrently
- 172 participants running on one domain
- Each application able to join up to 10 domains simultaneously
- Week-long events with multiple sessions starting and stopping without a single OpenDDS issue
- Computers have OpenDDS daemons running on them for weeks on end without issues
- System can now be replicated and used in other projects with complete confidence in its reliability
NAVAIR Public Release 2022-434.
Distribution Statement A – Approved for Public Release
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