ACTiSYS IrDA Test Lab. Information (1998)

• IrDA INTER-OP CERTIFICATION - BACKGROUND:
• BER (BIT ERROR RATE) TEST METHOD:
• TEST FRAME FOR IrDA BIT-ERROR-RATE TEST: WHY DO WE NEED IT?
• TEST FRAME SOURCE CODE FOR BIT-ERROR-RATE TEST:
• ACTiSYS IrDA SYSTEM TEST SOFTWARE, ACT-IR9003SW (With ACT-IR2000B/L):

*IrDA INTER-OP CERTIFICATION - BACKGROUND:

IrDA set up Test Council (IrDA-TC) in 1997 to assure useful IrDA inter-operability among the 45 million+ IrDA enabled devices on the market.

1) Five IrDA Certification Test Lab's have been authorized by IrDA-TC in July 1998 to develop test procedures and to test Reference Products and DUT's. Each Test Lab may claim to be capable of Inter-Op Test only or both Inter-Op and IrDA Compliance Tests. The latter capability is required to qualify the Reference Product for each device category. ACTiSYS operates two Test Lab's; in our Fremont, Ca. headquarter and Taiwan subsidiary. Both Lab's have full Inter-Op and Compliance test capability and started operation in Oct. 1998.

2) Test Lab. will test and recommend "Golden Reference Product" for each device category that meets IrDA Physical (BER) and Protocol Spec. as well as pass the Inter-Op test. IrDA-TC will review the test report submitted by the Test Lab. If passed, it will recommend to the IrDA full Board of Directors which will review and if approve, inform the IrDA office. The IrDA office will issue "IrDA Reference Product" certification documents and list the product model on the IrDA web site.

3) Inter-Op test will subject DUT to be tested against these Golden Reference Products for functional inter-op of the specified functions of the DUT. Bit Error Rate is usually also tested and included in the Test lab report. The procedure of receiving official "IrReady" certification and listed on IrDA web site is the same as described above for "IrDA Reference Product".

*BER (BIT ERROR RATE) TEST METHOD:

1) The device under test (DUT) can be either a Primary or a Secondary Station. But during the test, the DUT always plays the Secondary role.

2) The DUT will use its native IrDA hardware and native IrDA driver stack which implemented the Test Frame in IrLAP as specified in the IrDA Protocol Spec. No special test software is necessary during the test at the DUT side.

3) The Tester (Test Reference station) is a PC with IrDA hardware of controlled IR emission intensity (e.g. ACTiSYS IR2000B/L or IR3000M) and a special test software (e.g. ACTiSYS ACT-IR9003SW), but not stack testing. The Tester always play the Primary role.

*"TEST FRAME" FOR IrDA BIT-ERROR-RATE TEST: WHY DO WE NEED IT?
((c) Copyright 1997-1998 ACTiSYS Corp.)

Most of the hardware components such as the IR transceiver, the encoder/decoder or the integrated IrDA I/O chip are often tested by the component manufacturer to be IrDA compliant. Each software layer of course can also be individually tested to be IrDA compliant. However, when all these IrDA compliant components are put together, unexpected result may happen.

Once the engineering phase is done and manufacturing phase starts, there are many possibilities at the assembly line too. Also, after the manufacturing phase is done and the products are shipped, there remains the field service issue of screening test in the field or at service centers.

Methods for system testing must be planned and designed into the IrDA implementation, not an afterthought. A good system test methodology is essential to facilitate both engineering, the production and field service.

Most of engineering mishaps usually are "in the area between the Physical Layer and IrLAP". Production mishaps usually are "confined to Physical Layer only". Consequently, a very simple and effective system test is to access the optional test frame feature of IrLAP, particularly the test frame feature within a connection.

The test frame feature is very simple to implement in the device under test. This can usually be accomplished by "adding only 6 lines of C codes! (attached here)". If implemented, a specially programmed tester tool can fully exercise the Physical Layer and IrLAP layer in the device under test (DUT) automatically. This test can range from very thorough for engineering study or QC diagnosis to very speedy for production, quality control or field screening. Both fashions are especially useful for Inter-op test among different IrDA device classes.

Anybody who can implement IrDA stack can write it in 10 seconds! For such little effort and no overhead, one can enable such effective and convenient testing in the phases following the engineering implementation. We therefore, recommend that the Test Frame in the IrLAP layer to be mandatory.

*"TEST FRAME" SOURCE CODE FOR BIT-ERROR-RATE TEST:
 

The source codes to effect such efficient Test Frame implementation is listed as follows:

When the station is playing the secondary role in Normal Response Mode (NRM) and an incoming frame is received, one normally checks the following:

a) the CRC is correct b) the C/R bit is set c) the connection address is intended for this station

If the incoming frame passes all these, one then examines the Control field and takes the appropriate action accordingly. This can be implemented as a chain of

"if (...) {...}",

"else if (...) {...}", ..., "else {...}".

To implement the test frame option, one needs to add the following code to that chain:

..............................................

else if (frame_buffer[1] == 0xF3)

/* test frame + P bit received */

{

frame_buffer[0] &= 0xFE;

/* clear the C/R bit */

transmit(frame_buffer, incoming_size);

/* bounce it back with C/R bit cleared */

}

..............................................

The procedure "transmit(...)" calculates the CRC and sends the frame out. The very first bit in the frame buffer (i.e., the C/R bit) is changed, thus the outgoing CRC will be totally different from that of the incoming frame.

----------------------------------------------

The Test Frame is already an optional feature in both IrLAP 1.0 and IrLAP 1.1. For example the IrLAP 1.1 State Chart for Secondary Role State Machine, NRM(S) in Section 6.12.4.1, under:

Current State = RECV

Event = Recv u:test:cmd:P

There are two alternative Actions. Alternative 1 is:

Wait-Minimum-Turnaround-Delay

send u:test:rsp:F

Start-WD-timer

And alternative 2 is:

Wait-Minimum-Turnaround-Delay

Send s:rr:rsp:Vr:F

Start-WD-timer

After either alternative Actions are taken,

Next State = RECV

We suggest to use alternative 1 instead of alternative 2.

That is, respond with u:test:rsp:F, and not

s:rr:rsp:Vr:F.

*ACTiSYS IrDA SYSTEM TEST SOFTWARE, ACT-IR9003SW (With ACT-IR2000B/L):