IEEE 1516-2025

This document provides an overview of the High Level Architecture (HLA), defines a family of related HLA documents, and defines the principles of HLA in terms of responsibilities that federates (simulations, supporting utilities, or interfaces to live systems) and federations (sets of federates working together) upholds.

Many different classes of simulations exist. Each class has changing application characteristics and needs to be flexibly supported to allow for interoperability and reuse across classes and to limit the need to maintain multiple interoperability approaches. The HLA is a common integrated architecture that has been developed to provide a flexible approach to addressing these interoperability and reuse needs. This document describes the general principles defining the HLA and delineates the set of rules that apply to HLA federations and federates. Each rule is then described, and the rationale for its inclusion is provided.

Revision Standard - Active. The High Level Architecture (HLA) has been developed to provide a common architecture for distributed modeling and simulation. The HLA defines an integrated approach that provides a common framework for the interconnection of interacting simulations. This standard, describing the framework and rules of the High Level Architecture (HLA), is the capstone document for a family of related HLA standards. It defines the HLA, its components, and the rules that outline the responsibilities of HLA federates and federations to ensure a consistent implementation. Simulations are abstractions of the real world, and no one simulation can solve all of the functional needs for the modeling and simulation community. It is anticipated that technology advances will allow for new and different modeling and simulation (M&S) implementations within the framework of the HLA. The standards contained in this architecture are interrelated and need to be considered as a product set when changes are made. They each have value independently.