Performance of State Distributing Message-Oriented Middleware Systems Using Publish-Subscribe

Abstract: Distributed simulations require efficient communication to represent complex scenarios, which presents a great challenge. This paper investigates the use of message-oriented middleware (MOM) to address this challenge by integrating the flight simulator X-Plane with the tactical simulator TACSI and evaluating the performance of different data transfer approaches. The study assesses performance by measuring the maximum sustainable throughput (MST) and the latency of a publish-subscribe-based MOM system. Two data distribution methods are compared: single-topic publishing and publishing to multiple subtopics. The results show that single-topic publishing achieves higher MST and lower latency when transmitting the same data volume. These findings provide valuable insights for deciding the state distribution method for publish-subscribe MOM systems. Additionally, this study highlights the limitations of manual determination of MST and underlines the need for accurate performance measurement techniques.