A Universal and Configurable Simulator for Distributed Systems

S271 has been widely adopted as a support tool for the validation and experimentation of distributed systems. It allows different devices and applications to be evaluated and analysed without requiring the actual presence of those machines. Although the simulation plays an important role in investigating the behaviours of distributed systems, it results in a serious simulator building problem as the systems become more complicated and dynamically data-driven. Most simulators are designed and developed to target a specific application, lacking the capabilities to become a general and standardized tool for researchers. In order to solve this problem, a new approach to implement a universal and configurable simulator is proposed in this paper. The simulator presented uses a logic automaton to simulate the activities of a real device, and generates the incentive data for tested equipment according to the predefined XML-based files. The proposed approach is a trustworthy means of improving the flexibility and robustness of a simulator design subject to future changes. The experimental results show that this approach is efficient and can meet the increasing requirement of modern simulations of real-time distributed systems.