NetBeans Platform Control Application for Testing of Cellular Networks

I'm Stefano Chiappa and I'm from Milan (Italy). I work at Prisma Engineering (http://www.prisma-eng.com/) as Lead Software Engineer of the Simulator User Interface Team.

AirMosaic is an application on the NetBeans Platform for controling Prisma's UeSIM, which is a multi mobile simulator. The UeSIM is basically a server with some antennas able to connect to a base station and simulate a population of mobiles doing some basic or complex Test Procedures.

These procedures can be "real-world" applications such as HTTP, FTP, Mail, VOIP calls or protocol-dependent procedures such as attachment/detachment to the Core Network. Several mobile technologies are supported: LTE/UMTS/GSM. The images below are taken from LTE version.

In the first step a population of mobiles is created. It is possible to edit a huge amount of parameters related to the mobile device hardware and the user subscription related to the SIM. The following image shows the editing of this mobile database, which is performed inside a NetBeans editor and properties window (click to enlarge the images):



Once a Mobile population has been created, it is possible to create a scenario (navigator window) where is described what a single or group of mobiles will do. The available test procedures are collected and grouped inside a navigator window on the left bottom side, where you can see some of the available tests:



When the scenario has been created, it is possible run it through the UeSIM hardware. This is displayed in the next image:

On the upper left side of the image, AirMosaic displays, through some gears, the currently running test. We used a central editor window to display some counters of the running simulation. It is possible to choose the displayed counters by checking a node of the tree on the left side of the window. On the lower side of the application, there is an output window that displays the sequence of events happening during the simulation.

Once a scenario has been completed, the scenario window, on the application's top left, shows a green circle to indicate that the test has been completed successfully, as you can see in the next image:



Some plots can be drawn for each counter available. It is possible to put different counters on the same plot or on different plots. This is displayed in the next image:



At the end of a test, it is possible to generate a report, save it as a PDF, or send it by mail automatically, as shown in image below:




This is basically what the application does. Several features are still in development, of course!