Power and Fan Control Automated Testing

Abstract: Ericsson is one of the few famous providers of telecommunication equipments and related services to mobile and fixed network operators  globally. Over 1,000 networks in more than 180 countries use Ericsson network equipment and 40 percent of all mobile traffic are passing through Ericsson systems. A new version of a unit called Power and Fan Module (PFM) is under development at Ericsson AB. It is a fan controller system and power supplier unit for the Evolved Generic Ericsson Magazine (EGEM). While the older versions of PFM has designed and developed by a third party company, due to some strategical reasons, Ericsson decided to redesign and build it internally. The new version is designed to provide the same functionality as the old one extended and improved with some new features. This project currently is in the verification phase and a number of tests need to be automatically performed to assure that old features are still working and no new faults has been introduced as the result of adding the new features. To test this hardware a principle of the hardware testing technique called Built-In Self Test (BIST) is used. It is a cost-effective solution that makes remote hardware tests easier. The main task of this master thesis is investigating to find an efficient and reliable way of establishing connection to a specific range of hardware (including PFM) and automatically perform built-in tests that are already embedded on that hardware to test its functionality. The ultimate goal is to develop a tool to automatically test a hardware and as the result increase efficiency and reduce the need of manual testing, money and human resources. PFM is chosen to be tested with this generic tool which is called Pbist. Moreover this tool is aimed to be integrated into an existing test framework called JUnit Common Auto Tester (JCAT). In this thesis, the design and implementation of such a tool is discussed for Windows platform. Furthermore, the solutions and methods to migrate this tool from Windows to Linux has been investigated and discussed.