The Design And Implementation Of A Conformance Testing System For 6LoWPAN Protocol Stack

Sensor network consists of a number of sensor nodes which are capable of signal processing and networking of the data. This technology is now widely used in many areas including environment, military, industry etc. IPv6 is the new version of internet protocol; it will be the worldwide Internet core protocol in the near future for its inherent advance. IPv6 is designed for wired, high-rate network environment; it will have some problem when used for wireless, low-rate sensor network environment. In NOV 2004, IETF has established a new group-6LoWPAN whose main task is to solve the problem of IPv6 over low-power, low-rate wireless personal area network. ECNU Net-Lab has designed an IPv6 protocol stack to solve 6L0WPAN problem.Protocol specifications are usually described by natural language, so different person may have different understanding. To ensure that implements are conformed to protocol specification and different implementations can intercommunicate, protocol conformance testing must be carried out. To carry out conformance test manually is a very hard task. TTCN and TTCN based conformance testing system is adapted by more and more people, but TTCN testing system is quite complex and not easy to develop for a small project like our 6L0WPAN. So, we would like to find a new way to develop a testing system that can provide an easy way to develop test suite and can automatically run test cases.The paper firstly introduces the theory, framework and development process of protocol conformance testing, and summarizes the status of testing systems available currently in the world. Then the paper introduces the main features and testing environment of the protocols been tested. The rest of this paper that is the main part of the paper discusses the design and implementation of our testing system in detail.The aim of this testing system is friendly to user, transplantable, independent of operating system and can be used for other protocols. Functions of the system includes: the mechanism to describe and mange test cases; automatic running all test cases; automatic assignment of right verdict.The core part of this system is developed in C++ language. Test case description part of this system is developed using Yacc. The system also provides friendly graphic user interface that is developed on the platform of MFC.