Principles and Experiments of a Multi-Agent Approach for Large Co-Simulation Networks Initialization

Abstract

ICAART 2017 will be held in conjunction with ICORES 2017 and ICPRAM 2017.International audienceSimulating large systems, such as smart grids, often requires to build a network of specific simulators. Makingheterogeneous simulators work together is a challenge in itself, but recent advances in the field of co-simulationare providing answers. However, one key problem arises, and has not been sufficiently addressed: the initial-ization of such networks. Many simulators need to have proper input values to start. But in the network, eachinput is another simulator’s output. One have to find the initial input values of all simulators so their computedoutput is equal to the initial input value of the other linked simulators. Given that simulators often containdifferential equations, this is hard to solve even with a small number of simulators, and nearly impossible witha large number of them. In this paper, we present a mutli-agent system designed to solve the co-simulationinitialization problem, and show preliminary results on large networks