An end-user-centric test generation methodology for performance evaluation of mobile networked applications

We propose a model-based test generation methodology to evaluate the impact of the interaction of the wireless network and application configurations on the performance of mobile networked applications. We consider waiting time delay to model wireless network quality. We classify mobile applications into two groups. Group I represents applications where end-user experience is mainly affected by waiting time delay during service consumption, while group II represents applications where end-user experience is affected by waiting time delay before service consumption. Test generation is formulated as an inversion problem. However, for group I applications, solving the inversion problem is expensive. Therefore, we utilize metamorphic testing to mitigate the cost of test oracles. We formulate metamorphic test generation as maximization of the distance between seed and follow-up test cases. Two test coverage criteria are proposed: user experience and user-experience-and-input interaction. Network models are developed for a mobile device that has network access through a WiFi hot spot and uses either transmission control protocol or user datagram protocol. Two mobile applications are used to demonstrate the methodology: multimedia streaming and web browsing. Application of the methodology when user actions are taken into consideration is also addressed. The effectiveness of the methodology is evaluated using two metrics: the incurred time cost and redundancy in the generated test suite. The obtained results show the advantage of casting test generation as an inversion problem, compared with random testing. For apps with intensive performance models, combining metamorphic testing with the methodology has tremendously reduced the cost of test oracles.