Wireless sensor networks (WSN) are an enabling technology in ubiquitous computing to support Hong Kong as a next-generation services centre. The quality of embedded WSN software is essential for assuring its success.

Since the majority of the programs involved are control software, the testing of control predicates is crucial. Nonetheless, this task is difficult because of memory constraint and primitive operating system support. Software engineers spend a disproportionate amount of effort on software testing.

We plan to develop a fault-based predicate testing toolset for WSN software. We shall use the programs developed on TinyOS, the de facto WSN operating system, as a testbed. It generates the patterns for desirable test cases and allows software engineers to refine them iteratively. A major technical challenge is to fit the test instrumentation under stringent memory constraints. No existing toolset provides this capability.