re: 3G IOT Test Suites
>> New Test Tools Promise Global 3G Roaming
ETSI - 3GPP Release
Sophia-Antipolis, France
18 July 2002
Users of 3rd Generation (3G) mobile systems can expect to benefit from superior interoperability of mobile terminals and other user equipment, thanks to a newly-released set of test suites. These test suites will provide a means of proving the interoperability necessary for global roaming that is one of the key strengths of the next generation mobile networks.
Designed by the Technical Specification Group for Terminals (TSG-T) of the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP™), the test suites provide a common platform against which terminal implementations may be tested to ensure that mobiles from different manufacturers behave consistently. The implications of the global acceptance of the 3GPP standard present a significant challenge to the industry, and rigorous testing is critical to the successful adoption of this technology by users around the world.
The test suites have been developed in a two-stage process by the Terminals Testing working group of TSG-T. The first stage involved a prose specification giving a general description of the purpose and method of each test. The second stage produced a formal description of each test, written in the test language TTCN (Testing and Test Control Notation), which itself is the subject of an international standard, ISO-IEC-9646-3.
The TTCN release consists of a number of abstract test suites (ATS), each focussed on testing a different layer or area of the 3GPP communication protocols, together with modules containing common procedures and generic functions. All the suites are designed to run on commercially available test equipment.
In total over 600 test cases have been written. This formidable achievement is due to the considerable skills and effort provided by the membership of 3GPP, which contains a broad representation from across the mobile telecommunications industry throughout the world.
The latest release of the test suites (Version 1.4.0) is available from the 3GPP web site at
3gpp.org.
The timing of this release is deliberate, to permit the suites to be verified on early test equipment and mobile terminals in readiness for the large-scale deployment of commercial 3G networks. <<
- Eric - |
