Actors and virtual time: An experience using Time Warp, Timed Petri Nets and Cellular Networks

This paper describes an actor based framework which allows the development of distributed time dependent applications. The approach is centred on light-weight actors and on reflection techniques which provide a time-sensitive message scheduling structure. As a significant application, the paper reports an experience using an implementation of a Time Warp mechanism upon which an effective simulation model of generalised timed Petri nets (TPN) is built. The TPN structure is then used to analyse a formal model for large cellular networks. Some performance measures are finally provided.