Interoperability Test Suite Research Articles

Interoperability Verification in ISO 18000-7 Active RFID Systems: Experimental Setup and Results

Interoperability in an RFID system conforming to ISO 18000-7 standard is defined as the ability of any commercial interrogator to communicate with any commercial tag. A possibility that conformance verification in the physical communication layer between active tags and interrogators (readers) does not satisfy the interoperability property is established. Challenging the traditional or matrix test to verify interoperability, a novel methodology to verify interoperability for active RFID systems in particular and all communication systems following a command-reply protocol in general is introduced in a prior publication. In this article, the methodology is experimentally implemented using industry standard laboratory equipment and automation tools to develop a fully automated interoperability test suite. The automated test system design considerations, challenges and results are discussed in detail. For a particular equipment, the NI-5671 Radio Frequency Signal generator, the maximum number of samples that can be tested for different parameters of the physical communication layers are provided. The equipment limitations are discussed to provide the reader with guidelines to experiment with, and a reference to evaluate the resolution (one measure of the accuracy of the test) of different equipment. The different parameters considered in the test and their interactions in determining the interoperability property are recorded.

A test suite conversion method: from interoperability test to conformance test

In this paper we propose a method for easier creation of conformance test suites. Instead of a formal description of a protocol, our method needs an interoperability test suite. The conformance test suite in this method is constructed by re-using parts of an existing test suite. We have used a test suite for OSPF (Open Shortest Path First) routing protocol to present our method through an example. We describe how the interoperability test suite and the conformance test suite for the same protocol look like. Then we construct the re-using method by comparing these test suites and by identifying the re-usable parts. We also investigate the resulted test suite to find out the goodness of the conversion. Finally, we compare the coverage of two conformance test suites that are based on the same test purposes and one of them was created by this conversion method.

Fully automated interoperability test suite derivation for communication protocols

We propose an automatic test derivation method for testing interoperability of communication protocols. It first derives a skeleton test suite for control part through a sort of reachability analysis. Next, it parameterizes each test case. Finally, it completes the test suite by actualizing test cases by assigning values to their parameters. By constructing test case space based on stable states and by basing test case actualization step on orthogonal arrays used in experimental design techniques, state space explosion is avoided. In order to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness, out method is applied to the ATM/B-ISDN signaling protocol and TCP. The application results show that our method surpasses the conventional methods in terms of both test size and coverage.

Interoperability test suite derivation for communication protocols

This paper addresses the problem of interoperability testing for communication protocols. We develop a coherent framework of interoperability testing in which the notions of interoperability, interoperability testing, interoperability test case and interoperability test architecture are interrelated and a systematic interoperability test suite derivation method based on the framework. The approach to interoperability testing is illustrated with the example of the ATM Signaling Protocol. To demonstrate practicality of the approach, we implemented executable test suites derived by the method on a commercial ATM test platform, applied them for interoperability testing of various ATM equipment and analyzed the testing results.