Testing IoT systems using a hybrid simulation based testing approach

• Published in: Computing Vol. 101; no. 7; pp. 857 - 872
• Main Authors: Bosmans, Stig, Mercelis, Siegfried, Denil, Joachim, Hellinckx, Peter
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Vienna Springer Vienna 01.07.2019; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Artificial Intelligence; Computer Appl. in Administrative Data Processing; Computer Communication Networks; Computer Science; Constraint modelling; Human behavior; Hybrid systems; Information Systems Applications (incl.Internet); Simulation; Software Engineering; Synchronism; 68U20 (Computer science/Computing methodologies and applications/Simulation); Participatory sensing; Simulation; Internet of Things; Emergent behavior; Testing
• ISSN: 0010-485X; 1436-5057
• DOI: 10.1007/s00607-018-0650-5

This paper presents an extensive overview of the challenges that arise when testing large IoT applications at the system level. In order do that we start from analyzing behavior of local entities such as IoT devices or people interacting with the IoT system. The interactions of these local entities eventually leads to an emergent behavior. Both the emergent behavior and the local behavior need to be taken into account when testing IoT systems. Therefore, we present a novel hybrid simulation based testing approach that is able to effectively facilitate interactions of these local entities. Furthermore, we introduce various solutions to the challenges that arise when implementing this hybrid methodology. These challenges are mainly related to the IoT development pipeline, synchronization between real-life and simulation environment and the scalability constraints of modern simulation techniques.