DUECA Delft University Environment for Communication and Activation

What is this?

DUECA is a "middleware library" for distributed (over computers) real-time calculation processes. Modules written to use DUECA can communicate with other modules running in a possibly distributed DUECA process, no matter where these other modules are located. In addition each module can specify its update rate, and access to data of the "right time" is automatically given by DUECA.

DUSIME (Delft University SIMulation Environment) builds forth on DUECA, to give you an environment tailored to implement real-time (hardware in the loop and man in the loop) simulations.

DUECA/DUSIME has been used for over 20 years at the Control and Simulation department, Aerospace Engineering, TU Delft. It forms the backbone for many simulation projects and experiments on the SIMONA Research Simulator and other facilities. It is released as open source in 2022.

How is it implemented?

It is implemented as:

• A set of libraries, dueca, dueca-extra (additional tools), dueca-dusime, dueca-inter, dueca-udpcom, dueca-websock, dueca-hdf5, dueca-ddff

• Support scripts for setting up simulations, code generation, etc.

• There is also Documentation, which can be generated from the doc folder.

• Some example code.

What is in here?

• The dueca folder contains the DUECA core code; modules, channels, and some older communication tools. Its gui subfolder contains graphical interfaces.

• The extra folder contains a hodge-podge of helper stuff that may be useful in implementing simulations.

• dusime contains the code supporting simulations.

• The folder hdf5utils contains generic logging code with hdf5.

• The folder udpcom contains the code that links DUECA executables over a network.

• The folder inter can connect multiple DUECA processes, similar to HLA or DIS.

• The code generator for communicatable objects is in pycodegen.

• With the websock addition DUECA can offer websocket communication.

• The obs folder contains build files for rpm-based or deb-based distributions. Currently building for Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora and OpenSUSE.

Building and running

DUECA can use, depending on how you configure it, a considerable number of third party libraries. The main interface is created in GTK, (versions 2 and 3 currently). The simulation set-up is scripted in either Python (currently preferred) or Guile (scheme).

When you are looking to use DUECA for your simulation, rather than work on DUECA's development, the best way to start is with the packages compiled on the OpenSUSE build service in the repabuild project.

For inspecting DUECA itself or development work on the middleware, start with linuxtmp.script or osxtmp.script (as it sometimes runs/builds on OSX with macports), and install dependencies as needed.

Note that by itself, DUECA won't do anything, you need to create your own application code to make a project. You can check out and run the DuecaTestCommunication project, but note that that project's only use is as a test vehicle. The documentation also details how you can make a project named SimpleSimulation.

After having installed DUECA (through compilation or from packages), you can start to use it in development of simulation projects. Please check the documentation for the dueca-gproject script. You will need an "upstream" git repository for your code.

References

Paassen, M. M. van, Olaf Stroosma, and J. Delatour. “DUECA - Data-Driven Activation in Distributed Real-Time Computation.” In AIAA Modeling and Simulation Technologies Conference, 7. Denver (CA): American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2000. https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2000-4503.

Acknowledgements

Jerome, for entertaining the initial ideas

Colleagues and students, for feedback on bugs and features

Conchi, Daniel and Alexandra, for sharing their time.