E2E Automated Testing
What topic or problem does the demo address | solve?

Has been brought by EANTC. During the plugfest, there would be multiple components under test at a limited time which is challenging. Due to the pandemic, it is more challenging because there would be no onsite support from the vendors. In such a difficult case, automation testing is mandatory to speed up the testing remotely and parallelly.

Why is E2E testing so important?
  • Multi-vendor integration is the biggest challenge in disaggregated infrastructures
  • End-to-end testing provides the most realistic and versatile environment
  • Required to close the gap between vendor unit testing and production readiness
  • Strong test plans based on O-RAN Alliance and TIP work enable robust functional, performance, synchronization, mobility, resilience, quality of service/slicing, and security tests
WHY IS AUTOMATED TESTING HELPFUL?
  • Greatly speeds up testing
  • Reduces efforts per test run; enable regression testing
  • Enables sharing of test tool resources across multiple test setups
  • Supports remote and distributed testing
IMPLEMENTATION CORNERSTONES
  • Flexible test automation controller
  • GUI support to create/update test cases, start/stop test runs, and collect/review results and logs.
  • Interfacing with multiple lab test tools and auxiliary systems
  • Role-based access control enables parallel use by project teams (admins and users)
How does it solve the problem?

We enable a flexible automation testing architecture in our project. One automation testing server integrates into the test tools/emulators via Open APIs. The test engineers could access the automation testing services through the Graphic User Interface (GUI), to create/update the test cases, start/stop the test runs, and collect/review the results and logs. The GUI is exposed to the partners for remote testing, with the account permit controlling. The partner could access the GUI at any location via an OpenVPN connection.


The test tools are all under the control of the automation server. Multiple users could execute the selected test runs at the same for their devices under test.

How does it solve the problem?
E2E Automated Testing
SETTINGS AND REQUIREMENTS

The automation server connects to the testing components (i.e., test tools/emulators and system/device under test) via APIs.

To be included in the automation, the following requirements must be fulfilled by the components:

 

  1. API user guide shared with i14y Lab.
  2. Management and control plane connected to i14y Lab OAM shared network (so that the automation server can access them).
  3. API is exposed to the automation server.
  4. Access is permitted for the automation server.
SETTINGS AND REQUIREMENTS
Abbrevations
  • GUI: Graphic User Interface
  • OAM: Operations, Administration Management
  • O-RU: Open Radio Unit
  • O-DU: Open Distribution Unit
  • UE: User Equiment
  • RF: Radio Frequency
  • AF: Audio Frequency