Simulations within Information Fusion - The Need for Fault Tolerance High Fault Tolerance Degree

Information fusion infrastructures have a need for real-time simulations. Many information fusion applications inherently execute real-world action as a result of combining simulations and real hardware or end-users. We articulate the need for a high degree of fault tolerance for systems dealing with real-world actions. In this paper we elaborate on why traditional simulation infrastructures is not sufficient and provide a solution this problem. Our approach include usage of a whiteboard architecture that serve as a communication layer as well as storage system. The whiteboard architecture is implemented on a distributed active real-time database prototype called DeeDS NG. The paper describes the different degrees of fault tolerance available; ranging from fault masking down to best effort fault tolerance, depending on the particular needs of a system. For the future we are planing a series of simulation experimentsto validate our claims concering the usfulness of the whitebord architecture described in the paper.