EventSimulation

Event simulation is a modeling technique used to represent and analyze systems where changes occur at discrete points in time. These changes, known as events, trigger a state transition within the system. Examples of systems that can be modeled using event simulation include queuing systems, manufacturing processes, communication networks, and biological systems. The core idea is to advance the simulation clock from one event time to the next, rather than simulating time in fixed increments.

In an event-driven simulation, a schedule of future events is maintained. When the simulation clock advances to the time of the next scheduled event, that event is processed. Processing an event may involve updating the state of the system, generating new future events, and scheduling them on the event list. The simulation continues until a termination condition is met, such as reaching a specific simulation time or completing a certain number of events.

Key components of an event simulation typically include the simulation clock, an event list (or future event list) which stores scheduled events and their times, the system state variables that describe the current status of the system, and a set of event routines that define how the system state changes when a particular event occurs. Event simulation is particularly efficient for systems where events are sparse, meaning that the time between events can be variable and potentially large. This approach contrasts with time-stepped simulation, where the system state is updated at regular, fixed time intervals, regardless of whether any changes have actually occurred.