Interoperability Testing Methodology for Smart Grids and Its Application on a DSM Use Case—A Tutorial

Interoperability is a challenge for the realisation of smart grids. In this work, we first present an interoperability testing methodology, which is substantial to perform interoperability tests for the smart grid. To show its applicability and facilitate its comprehension, we present an example by applying it on a Demand Side Management (DSM) use case. The DSM use case is chosen because it is a major topic for modern grids and it involves the participation of many actors. The tutorial exemplifies the interactions among those actors. The Smart Grid Architecture Model SGAM framework is used, where the mapping of the use case is presented along with the Message Sequence Chart (MSC). Then we describe the profiling of the equipment, relevant technical information and standards, which form the basis for the design and execution of the interoperability tests. We focus on the technical part of the interoperability testing; therefore, attention is focused on the information and communication layer. We present how the interoperability tests should take place and we analytically show the respective Test Cases (TC). The verdict of the test should be either PASS or FAIL. The paper shows how to successfully use the methodology for interoperability testing on a specific use case, whereas its applicability can be extended to any smart grid interoperability use case.

Analysis and Testing on Terminal RRC Connection Establishment Procedure in TD-LTE System Based on TTCN-3

This paper focuses on the terminal RRC connection establishment procedure, designs its message sequence chart (MSC), then write abstract test suits in TTCN-3 core language on TTworkbench test platform, generate GFT figure and compare it with the protocol specification, and complete conformance testing of RRC connection establishment procedure. At present, this scheme has been effectively verified in the project of TD-LTE TTCN extended test suite instrument development.

DETECTING EMERGENT BEHAVIOR IN DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS USING SCENARIO-BASED SPECIFICATIONS

Emergent behavior is an important issue in distributed systems' design. Detecting and removing emergent behavior during the design phase will lead to huge savings in deployment costs of such systems. An effective approach for the design of distributed systems is to describe system requirements using scenarios. A scenario, commonly known as a message sequence chart or a sequence diagram, is a temporal sequence of messages sent between system components. However, scenario-based specifications are prone to subtle deficiencies with respect to analysis and validation known as incompleteness and partial description. In this research, a method for detecting emergent behavior of scenario-based specification is proposed. The method is demonstrated and verified using a mine-sweeping robot as an example. Furthermore it has been demonstrated in this paper that scenario-based specifications can be used in agile software development and that the proposed methodologies in this research can be utilized effectively in agile approaches.

From Textual Scenarios to Message Sequence Charts

Requirements engineering, the first phase of any software development project, is the Achilles’ heel of the whole development process, as requirements documents are often inconsistent and incomplete. In industrial requirements documents natural language is the main presentation means. In such documents, the system behavior is specified in the form of use cases and their scenarios, written as a sequence of sentences in natural language. For the authors of requirements documents some facts are so obvious that they forget to mention them. This surely causes problems for the requirements analyst. By the very nature of omissions, they are difficult to detect by document reviews: Facts that are too obvious to be written down at the time of document writing, mostly remain obvious at the time of review. In such a way, omissions stay undetected. This book chapter presents an approach that analyzes textual scenarios with the means of computational linguistics, identifies where actors or whole actions are missing from the text, completes the missing information, and creates a message sequence chart (MSC) including the information missing from the textual scenario. Finally, this MSC is presented to the requirements analyst for validation. The book chapter presents also a case study where scenarios from a requirement document based on industrial specifications were translated to MSCs. The case study shows feasibility of the approach.