Activity-based DEVS modeling

Use of model-driven approaches has been increasing to significantly benefit the process of building complex systems. Recently, an approach for specifying model behavior using UML activities has been devised to support the creation of DEVS models in a disciplined manner based on the model driven architecture and the UML concepts. In this paper, we further this work by grounding Activity-based DEVS modeling and developing a fully-fledged modeling engine to demonstrate applicability. We also detail the relevant aspects of the created metamodel in terms of modeling and simulation. A significant number of the artifacts of the UML 2.5 activities and actions, from the vantage point of DEVS behavioral modeling, is covered in details. Their semantics are discussed to the extent of time-accurate requirements for simulation. We characterize them in correspondence with the specification of the atomic model behavior. We demonstrate the approach with simple, yet expressive DEVS models.