Research On BACnet Protocol Conformance Auto-Testing

With the rapid development of computer communication technology, computer networks are playing more and more important role in human's life. So protocol testing is a hot area of research in network protocol engineering. Because BACnet is the international standard communication protocol in building automation control networks (ISO 16484-5), the quantity of BACnet products in market grows very fast, and an effective method to test BACnet products has become a necessity.First, the article reviews the evolution and basic concepts of network protocol testing theory, and describes the process of conformance testing and means of testing based on EFSM.Second, based on the deep inspection of BACnet standard, the article analyzes the transferring rules of BACnet application state machine. With the model of EFSM, how the BACnet application state machine automatic generated by rule illation is proposed.Then, introducing the content of EPICS, discusses how is important to protocol conformance testing. By analyzing the content of BACnet conformance testing, the article describes not only the structure of the test rules, but also the structure of the test suite which is made by matching the facts in EPICS with the test rules.Finally, the definitions of BTS-Script which is a script-based test description method of BACnet conformance testing are presented. The article discusses the automatic generated process of test script composed of selected test steps from test suite. Further more, some shortages are pointed out and the further research is specified.