WCDMA Test Automation Workflow Analysis and Implementation
Yike Liu · KTH Publication Database DiVA (KTH Royal Institute of Technology) · 2009
In the modern wireless communication industry, radio communication equipment vendors not only produce communication hardware, but also produce software. In fact, software revenue is now a large part of the total revenue. As technology has developed and traffic demands increase, more and more functions required to implement the radio system are implemented via software rather than hardware. Today, many hardware functions are actually implemented with reconfigurable and programmable hardware. Therefore, it is often possible to perform an upgrade by loading new software (a software upgrade) rather than needing to change the physical hardware with every technology advance. However, introducing new elements and features in existing (often mature) software may cause unexpected problems. These problems may include new parts malfunctioning and failure or degradation of old functions. To avoid these problems, each version of software has to be thoroughly tested, not only to test the new parts, but also to verify that the old functions still work properly. Testing all the old functions is time and human resource consuming. Thus, there is an increasing demand for automated testing. This thesis will focus on why automated regression testing is necessary and how to implement automated testing in a specific environment. The thesis results show that automated testing can improve the test coverage by at least 40% for one of Ericsson’s WCDMA software releases. This coupled with a reduction in testing time enables more rapid development by significantly reducing the test time without compromising quality. All of these results lead to improved profitability and increased customer satisfaction.