AUTOMATING THE PROCESS OF TESTING THE FUNCTIONALITIES OF COMPLEX COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEMS

One very important part in a product or systems' life cycle is the testing, or better said, how we do it and how we interpret the results. One has to test while developing a product in order to assure its reliability and conformity with the handed requirements. Once you acquire a product or system, you have to test it to be sure you got what you wanted and to determine exactly its limitations. Forward on, while exploiting a product, you will have to test it periodically to prevent loss of functionalities or diminishing performance of some characteristics.Testing specific products, especially when speaking about electronic devices, had become more automated. In these particular cases, testing is much faster and more reliable. Complex communication systems are composed of a variety of products and, even if each one works perfectly independently, all kinds of problems may appear at system level. To avoid these difficulties we have to test the system and use the results in order to improve the system as a whole. In the first part of this paper we present a series of testing procedures, with an accent on military communications systems, presenting the difficulties we have encountered. From those, we have selected some procedures that are suitable for an automated process conducted by an application for software assisted testing. As a necessary step in introducing the software assisted testing, we presented the software requirements for this application. The following steps will conclude by presenting the improvements of testing procedures with regard to rapid and objective tests' results.