An overview of discrete event simulation methodologies and implementation

Discrete event simulation has been widely used to model and evaluate computer and engineering systems and has been an on-going area of research and development. This paper presents an overview of the field. It covers specifications of discrete event systems, simulation methodology, simulation languages, data structures for event management, and front and backend support in simulation packages including random number generation and resource management. The emphasis of the survey is on simulation methodology and event scheduling, which forms the core of any simulation package or environment.