The TRIANGLE testbed is a complex solution composed of several different and heterogeneous tools and instruments. In order to manage such complexity and successfully run experiments, an orchestration and management framework (OMF) is needed. In particular, there is the need to describe and sequence the actions that must be performed within each experiment.
The original plan for the TRIANGLE testbed was to use the well-known and open source OMF originally developed by Rutgers University. While the tool has several advantages in facilitating complex deployments, in the first year of the TRIANGLE project it was proven to be unsatisfactory as a tool for time-based and time-critical experiments. If we think about LTE and other wireless technology, the timing resolution for creating a scripting solution for describing an experiment is in the order of tenth of milliseconds. The OMF could not provide such time accuracy. For this reason, the consortium decided to move to the Test Automation Platform (TAP) Developer’s System provided by Keysight Technologies, newly released in October 2016.
The TAP Developer’s System is a new and intuitive way of creating tests and experiments that require the orchestration and management of complex testbeds and workbenches. TAP is used to create the tests (scripts) and to run the test in an automated fashion. It is a scripting and sequencing solution that was devised to support Keysight products. TAP has a graphical user interface (GUI) that allows drag and drop of pre-coded basic “steps” (single instructions) that can be parametrized arbitrarily. Its modular and flexible structure enables the TRIANGLE team to easily design additional plugins to orchestrate all the hardware and software components present in the testbed with the desired time resolution for wireless-based experiments. Furthermore, the TAP’s drag and drop graphical user interface would speed up not only the development of test cases and experiments by the TRIANGLE projects, but also ease the approach to the testbed by external researchers and experts that would like to have full control over their experiments.