www.hcltech.

com

QEx Whitepaper

IoT Basics and

Testing Focus

business
assurance
& testing

AuthOr:
Rajesh Shanmugasundaram
Technical Architect Mobile Development and
Test Automation
Business Assurance and Testing Services (BATS)

WHITEPAPER September 2015

IOT BASICS AND TESTING FOCUS | September 2015

TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT............................................................................................... 3

ABBREVIATIONS..................................................................................... 3

WHAT IS INTERNET OF THINGS?.......................................................... 4

IoT TECHNOLOGY TRENDS................................................................... 5

IoT RESEARCH REPORT........................................................................ 8

IoT APPLICATION LANDSCAPE............................................................. 9

IoT KEY COMPONENTS........................................................................ 10

IoT PRODUCTS...................................................................................... 11

IoT TESTING FOCUS AREA.................................................................. 12

IoT TESTING SCOPE............................................................................. 13

IoT TESTING COVERAGE..................................................................... 14

AUTHOR DETAILS................................................................................. 16

REFERENCES........................................................................................ 16

ABOUT HCL........................................................................................... 17

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IOT BASICS AND TESTING FOCUS | September 2015

ABSTRACT
In todays world, across forums and articles related to the IT industry, we can find
the mention of digital enablement of things, or IoT, expanded as Internet of Things.
In other words, we can say that the world is leaping forward into an internet-enabled
revolutionary computing technology which involves communication Over The Air
(OTA) between Machine to Machine (M2M), machine to cloud, machine to objects,
and much more. This enables them to share intelligent information with each other
directly through embedded real world sensors and actuators connected to the internet.

This proliferation of IoT-based devices with embedded applications which cater

to diversified user stories will continue to grow swiftly. Going forward, IoT-based
devices are going to be a significant part of our life, irrespective of personal, business
or enterprise level transactions. This unprecedented growth has prompted all major
product companies to develop or spend huge investments on research in IoT which
will simplify our life through various automated data measuring and tracking
methodologies.

Internet, during its inception, was used to communicate with the world using basic
computers connected to an enterprise server. But now, the rise in new generation of
mobile communication technologies such as 2G, 3G, 4G, cut throat price wars, and
availability across the consumer world has made internet available to everyone using
any device such as Mobile phones, Tablets, Smart TVs or Setup boxes.

In IoT, everyday objects are connected to the internet using sensors or BLE
technologies, thus sharing data with each other, enabling anytime anywhere decisions.
This revolution will be the internets largest expansion ever and will have extensive
usage across industries. Given these factors, IoT is playing a major role in our life.

This research whitepaper focuses on and provides a brief about IoT, trends by sharing
key research report, business usages, and benefits. It also provides details about IoT
testing areas and testing types to be involved and different test scenarios to be tested.

ABBREVIATIONS
Sl. No. Acronyms Full form
1 IoT Internet of Things
2 OTA Over the Air
3 M2M Machine to Machine
4 IP Internet Protocol
5 OS Operating Systems
6 YoY Year on Year
7 QoQ Quarter on Quarter
8 UI User Interface
9 App Application
10 iOS iPhone, iPad

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IOT BASICS AND TESTING FOCUS | September 2015

WHAT IS INTERNET OF THINGS?

The concept of IoT was introduced and documented in early 1999 by Kevin Asthon.
IoT is the network of physical devices or things that are embedded with sensors,
actuators, or programmed software, building connectivity for exchanging data with
the manufacturer, operator and/or other connected devices. These IoT-enabled devices
communicate to the internet in dual enabled mode (on and off) to transmit specific
data to backend systems as and when required.

Gartner research forecasts that by 2020, there will be over 26Bn IoT-connected
devices; other research (IDC, ABI and Cisco) predicts that the estimate may go over
100Bn. IoT is a giant network of connected things (which also includes people).
The relationship will be between human to human, human to objects, and objects to
objects.

According Gartner research report, the economic value-add across different sectors is
expected to grow in 2020 to be USD 1.9Tn (ref. below figure)

QUOTES
yy Sensors and actuators embedded in physical objects are linked through wired and
wireless networks, often using the same Internet Protocol (IP) that connects the
Internet. McKinsey
yy Things are active participants in business, information and social processes where
they are enabled to interact and communicate among themselves and with the
environment by exchanging data and information sensed about the environment,
while reacting autonomously to the real/ physical world events and influencing it
by running processes that trigger actions and create services with or without direct
human intervention. European R&D Team
yy The Internet of Things represents an evolution in which objects are capable of
interacting with other objects. Hospitals can monitor and regulate pacemakers long
distance, factories can automatically address production line issues and hotels can
adjust temperature and lighting according to a guests preferences, to name just a few
examples. - IBM

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IOT BASICS AND TESTING FOCUS | September 2015

IoT TECHNOLOGY TRENDS

Product companies across the world are focusing on manufacturing IoT-based devices
and connections, buoyed by great emphasis and incentives from governments to
expand the digital footprint in their countries. A recent report from GSMA and BI
depicts that currently Asia has most number of IoT connections.

Percentage of Machine-to-Machine Connections

50%
45%
40%
35%
30%
25%
20%
15%
10%
5%
0%
Asia Europe North Latin Africa Oceania
America America

yy IDC estimates the IoT market to grow to USD 8.9Tn with over 212Bn connected things
by 2020
yy 50Bn devices will be connected to the Internet by 2020, predicts Cisco
yy The utility smart grid transformation is expected to almost double the customer
information system market, from USD 2.5Bn in 2013 to USD 5.5Bn in 2020, based on
a study from Navigant Research
yy The UK government recently approved GBP 45Mn (USD 76.26Mn) in research
funding for Internet of Things technologies
yy The number of developers involved in IoT activities will reach 1.7Mn globally by the end
of 2014, according to ABI Research estimates.

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IOT BASICS AND TESTING FOCUS | September 2015

Asia And Latin America Lead in Implementation

Europe 16% 14% 26% 17% 12% 16%

Norht America 12% 20% 25% 17% 11% 15%

Latin America 12% 30% 30% 15% 5% 8%

Asia 21% 51% 18% 6% 3%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
We already have an IoT Solution in Place In the Next 12 Months
In the Next 1-2 Years in the Next 2-5 years
No Data No Data2

The number of connected devices has already surpassed the total world population in
year 2005 and it is estimated that the number of devices will be around 50Bn which
will be about 7 times of the world population at that time.

World
Population
6.3 Billion 6.8 Billion 7.2 Billion 7.6 Billion

Connected
Devices
500 Million 12.5 Billion 25 Billion 50 Billion

More
connected
Connected devices
Devices 0.08 than 1.84 3.47 6.58
Person people

2003 2010 2015 2020

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IOT BASICS AND TESTING FOCUS | September 2015

Google trends also depict that from 2004 onwards most users started searching the
term Internet of Things has grown enormously.

Technology analysts Gartner suggest that IoT is currently at the peak of inflated
expectations. IoT has also been identified as one of the emerging technologies in
IT as noted in Gartners IT Hype Cycle (RHS Figure). A Hype Cycle is a way to
represent the emergence, adoption, maturity, and impact on applications of specific
technologies. It has been forecasted that IoT will take 510 years for market adoption.

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IOT BASICS AND TESTING FOCUS | September 2015

IoT RESEARCH REPORT

The research report below shows different industry projection for Global Economic
Value of IoT:

Industry projections for Economic Value of the Internet of Things in 2020 ($ trillions)25

14.4 7.1 4.5 1.9

1.9

Gartner
Machina
IDC
Cisco

The figure below depicts the number of vehicle registered with IoT-enabled application,
based on the recent ABI Research 2014:

Registered Vehicles with Internet of Things applications

400

North America 300

Europe
200
Asia-Pacific

100
Rest of the World

0
2014 2018 2022 2026 2030

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IOT BASICS AND TESTING FOCUS | September 2015

This figure shows the forecasted connected devices by 2020.

Industry estimates for Connected deices (billions)

100

80

60

40

20

ITU

Dell
IHs

Cisco

Ericsson
Gartner
Machina/GSMA

ABI

Morgan Stanley

Hammersmith Group
IoT APPLICATION LANDSCAPE
There are many verticals which will be impacted by the emerging IoT. These domains
can be classified based on the type of network availability, coverage, scale, heterogeneity,
repeatability, user involvement, and impact.

The figure below depicts different categorization of the domains:

Consumer
Smart
Home &
Security Cities

IoT
Applications
`
Healthcare Automobile

Energy &
Utilities Infra

Agriculture

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IOT BASICS AND TESTING FOCUS | September 2015

In each of the above verticals, there is a huge opportunity in IoT application

development and data transfer that can introduce convenience for enterprises as
well as the end users. For instance, the Consumer and Smart Home IoT produces
electricity usage data in the house and makes it available to the electricity (utility)
company which can in turn optimize the supply and demand in the Utility IoT. The
internet enables data sharing between different service providers in a seamless manner
creating multiple business opportunities.

IoT KEY COMPONENTS

IoT building blocks consist of three major components:

Things
Embedded object
connected with products
and other Things
combine processors,
sensors and software
with connectivity
Computing
Network Infrastructure
Communication
Upload or download
Communication data, perform analysis
networks like from data analytics tools
4G/3G,LTE, Bluetooth, create new software
Wi-Fi, NFC, Zig Bee application to display
connect Things to the different forms of value
internet in bidirectional and new business

THINGS
Embedded objects residing within products, which collect data from Sensors and
Actuators and send them to the backend systems.

NETWORK COMMUNICATIONS
Communication components form the bridge between things and backend analytic
systems. Internet enabled things communicate using different types of network
protocol (4G/3G, LTE, Wi-Fi, NFC, Bluetooth) through wired or wireless medium.

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IOT BASICS AND TESTING FOCUS | September 2015

COMPUTING INFRASTRUCTURE
This component receives data from different things and applications and provides
different business views of KPIs and performance parameters with the help of analytical
tools, thus helping the consumer/ enterprise to take business-critical decisions.

IoT PRODUCTS
There are already IoT-enabled devices available in the market.

Product Name Vendor Name Product Features

Smart yy Monitors your schedule and program
Thermostats itself to maximize both comfort and
energy efficiency
yy Auto enables room temperature up or
down, based on the weather conditions
and user presence in a room
Connected Cars

yy Tracks parking, billing. and

insurance automatically

Activity Tracker
yy Helps to monitor heart rate
patterns continuously, activity
levels, calorie expenditure, and
also skin temperature on your
wrist 24/7

Smart Outlet
yy Remotely switches any device or
appliance on or off
yy Tracks device energy usage
yy Provides notifications

Parking Sensor
yy Identifies real-time availability of
parking spaces on the phone
yy Uses Embedded Street Sensor on the
parking place

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IOT BASICS AND TESTING FOCUS | September 2015

IoT TESTING FOCUS AREA

Due to the recent focus and rising expectations for IoT-enabled devices, household
goods manufactures, healthcare vendors, utilities vendors, car manufactures, and
other vendors are planning to release proprietary IoT products on YoY and QoQ basis.
Moreover, the enterprise world is also rapidly migrating or developing and rolling out
their IoT-enabled apps into the mobile app market.

Every quarter, the expected number of IoT devices to be released is growing enormously
and the consumer expectations in terms of technology UI and product quality is
also rising fast. So delivering a non-intrusive, high quality product is very important
and thorough end-to-end functional, non-functional, and security testing becomes
critical. IoT-enabled devices have their own set of usability issues and challenges. For
example the mobile application not able to communicate to particular IoT device,
sensor not sending data, application not getting installed on a device, app regularly
crashing, and others.

Sensors

IoT Testing
Area
`
Network
Application Communication

Cloud/other
Network

Majority of these problems arise due to a) quick roll-out into the market without
proper testing, b) compromising testing platforms, and c) lack of usability behavior.
Thus the IoT-enabled devices are unlikely to work as expect. To ensure that these
devices work as expected, the IoT development organization has to follow end-to-end
quality testing.

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IOT BASICS AND TESTING FOCUS | September 2015

Any IoT Testing has to consider diverse scenarios that need to be tested, the
interoperability of devices, and the fact that most of the IoT devices are mission-
critical in nature requiring high code coverage. The process of automating testing is
imperative to its success and with simulators, once can easily mimic the network of
nodes, inherent to IoT which cuts down the hardware costs.

Overall, the testing challenges is wide area to look starting from devices, sensors with
backend data analytics, and also validation of various real-time IoT environments that
meet application intricacy and performance..

IoT TESTING SCOPE

There are four key IoT testing scopes which the team has to look into for testing any
IoT-enabled product. The following diagram illustrates the same:

Components Validation
Device Hardwar
Embedded Software
Application
Cloud infrastructure
Network Connectivity
Third party software

Function Validation
Interaction between device
IoT Testing Scope

Basic device Testing (Start/Stop/Restart/Interrupt)

Error Handling
Valid Calculation

Performance Validation
Data transmit Frequency
Multiple request handing
Synchronization
Interrupt testing
Device performance
Consistency validation

Security and Data Validation

Validate data packets
Verify data loses or corrupt
Data encryption/decryption
Data values
Users Roles and Responsibility & its Usage Pattern

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IOT BASICS AND TESTING FOCUS | September 2015

IoT TESTING COVERAGE

Each IoT scope comes with a list of challenges that the testers have to deal with
while testing. These issues have their own levels of severity, based on which the testers
generally prioritize the test cases.

The testing team has to focus on core components of the IoT system to treat functional
and connectivity testing as important elements of overall IoT product testing. This
testing also has to be prioritized based on the nature of the IoT product and the
dependency. The following type of testing is usually performed across the IoT products
before their release to market.

Security
Testing

Compatibility Performance
Testing Testing

Usability
Testing

Functional Services
Testing Testing

Network Operational
Testing Testing

Functional Testing: To check the way the consumer wants the output, based on
specific inputs given to the IoT app

Compatibility Testing: Categories verify and validate the possible combination of

device versions, communication protocol versions, mobile devices, resolutions, and
mobile OS version

Usability Testing: Verify user experience of IoT app, with respect to its usage, visibility
of text, appeal, and usefulness of the content to the end user

Network Testing: Verify the IoT app with different network connections and ensure
app to sync with all different backend combination protocol

Security Testing: Validate privacy of data, reliability of IoT app, verification,

availability, and authorization are the factors that need to be considered. Also verifies if
the IoT app uses any weak password or missing data encryption. Verify apps followed
network security standards and authentication mechanism to authenticate of the
required app.

Performance Testing: To check the overall performance of the IoT app and validate
the response time based on different user loads, optimize the code to improve the
performance, verify with different scenarios like low battery, less memory, switch
between different networks.

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IOT BASICS AND TESTING FOCUS | September 2015

Services Testing: Check the IoT app enabled with different service requests with
backend system with online and offline mode. Also verifies request and response of
system.

Operational Testing: To verify behavior of IoT app when battery fully discharged
when updated version app get installed or for any interruption of message or call
received

The table below gives you the detail testing type matrix that an IoT end-to-end system
should cover:

Backend
IoT Elements
Sensor Application Network
(Data
Testing Types
Center)

Functional Testing

Usability Testing

Security Testing

Performance Testing

Compatibility Testing

Services Testing

Operational Testing

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IOT BASICS AND TESTING FOCUS | September 2015

AUTHOR DETAILS

RAJESH SHANMUGASUNDARAM

REFERENCES
yy http://www.gartner.com/
yy http://www.forbes.com/
yy http://www.infoq.com/
yy http://www.techwell.com/
yy http://www.qatest.org/
yy http://www.cio.com/
yy TechTargets.com
yy Slideshare.net
yy www.bosch-si.com/
yy Cisco.com
yy www.cio.com/
yy www.millennialmedia.com
yy ABI Research
yy IDC Research
yy Fierce Mobile Content

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 ABOUT HCL

About HCL Technologies

HCL Technologies is a leading global IT services company working with clients in the
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