JOCosim: Using Java, OPNET, and C to Enable Mobile Co-Simulation

Military services have an active interest in the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for applications including surveillance and unmanned combat. In the future, UAV swarms will be able to gather intelligence cooperatively without human intervention. Since the physical employment of UAV swarm technology is not yet economical, simulation is often used to explore their design. This paper discusses a co-simulation prototype, JOCosim, for UAV swarms that leverages Java, OPNET, and other simulation engines. The fundamental contribution presented herein is that Java is used to provide command and control for a co-simulation involving external application-layer protocols and OPNET.