Program representations for testing wireless sensor network applications

Because of the growing complexity of wireless sensor network applications (WSNs), traditional software development tools are being developed that are specifically designed for their special characteristics. However, testing tools have yet to be proposed. One problem in developing testing tools is the need for a program representation that expresses the execution behavior. Due to characteristics of WSN applications that use a concurrent, event-based execution model, a representation is challenging to develop. In this paper, we present novel representations for WSNs applications that express the execution behavior of event and tasks, the major components of a WSN application. Our representations include a task posting graph, an event graph and finally an application graph that expresses the relationships among events and tasks as well as both timing and environmental interrupts. These representations are the first step in developing testing tools for WSN applications. Based on the graphs, traditional and event-based coverage criteria can be evaluated. When combined with individual Control Flow Graphs(CFGs) of events and tasks, the graphs' paths can be used as a criterion for evaluating the completeness of the test cases.