Poster Abstract: Wi-HTest: Testing Suite for Diagnosing WirelessHART™ Devices and Networks Song Han 1 , Jianping Song 1 , Xiuming Zhu 1 , Aloysius K. Mok 1 , Deji Chen 2 , Mark Nixon 2 Wally Pratt 3 , Veena Gondhalekar 3 1 Department of Computer Sciences, the University of Texas at Austin, Austin TX, USA 2 Emerson Process Management, 12301 Research Blvd., Bldg. III, Austin TX, USA 3 HART Communication Foundation, 9390 Research Blvd., Suite I-350, Austin TX, USA ABSTRACT WirelessHART was released in September 2007 and is the first open wireless communication standard specifically designed for process control applications. As an optional part of the HART ® Communication Protocol, WirelessHART is designed to the same standards for reliability and interoperability. To ensure the compliance with the HART Communication Protocol and the adherence to the high level of interoperability defined by the HART Communication Foundation (HCF), all WirelessHART devices must be thoroughly tested and registered with the HCF. In this paper, we present Wi-HTest, the test engine designed to exercise WirelessHART devices, thus facilitating compliance assessment. We discuss the detailed architecture of Wi-HTest and highlight several critical features like virtual devices and fault data injection. Categories and Subject Descriptors C.4 [Performance of Systems]: Design Studies, Measurement Techniques, Reliability, availability and serviceability General Terms Design, Measurement, Reliability Keywords WirelessHART, Wi-HTest, Interoperability, Fault Data Injection 1. INTRODUCTION WirelessHART is a secure and TDMA-based wireless mesh networking technology operating in the 2.4 GHz ISM radio band. WirelessHART is designed to be highly reliable and interoperable while being simple to install and operate. WirelessHART was engineered to strike a careful balance between cost, simplicity, battery-life and network performance. To assure product compliance of HART products (including WirelessHART devices), since 1995 the HCF has operated a rigorous Quality Assurance Program. As part of this program, the HCF develops detailed test specifications, test tools, and test automation. The HCF is currently developing Wi-HTest, an extension of the original HTest tool to support WirelessHART Quality Assurance. Wi-HTest is aimed to automate the execution of test cases defined in WirelessHART test specifications. More specifically, Wi-HTest provides the stimulus (good and bad) necessary to exercise operation of the DUT (Device Under Test). By evaluating DUT behavior in the presence of well and ill-behaved stimuli compliance can be assessed. This paper presents our design of Wi-HTest and discusses several critical features in Wi-HTest. For example, Wi-HTest can simulate virtual devices for advanced network layer testing. It can also manipulate packets to inject any faults required by the test specifications. Figure 1. Wi-HTest High Level Architecture 2. WI-HTEST ARCHITECTURE 2.1 Overview HTest is a tool used to stress the HART-enabled device being evaluated. Wi-HTest extends the original HTest to stress WirelessHART-enabled devices. The high level architecture of Wi-HTest is depicted in right side of Figure 1 and consists of two parts: the Wi-HTest Host and RF Interface. The Wi-HTest Host is responsible for overall control and execution of test scripts (small, narrowly-focused test applications) generating packets and relaying them to the RF Interface. The RF Interface is responsible for low-level, time-critical communications to and from the DUT using its onboard wireless transceiver. Responses from DUT are forwarded back to the Wi-HTest Host for further processing. The details of the system design of Wi-HTest are discussed in the following sections. Copyright is held by the author/owner(s). SenSys’08, November 4–7, 2008, Raleigh, North Carolina, USA. ACM 978-1-59593-990-6/08/11. 437