Testing Mobile Wireless Applications

A framework is described that can be used to build and test application-level software for wireless mobile computing. It emulates the physical mobility of wireless devices by using the logical mobility of software-based emulators of the devices and target software. Since each emulator is implemented as a mobile agent, it can dynamically carry the target software to each of the sub-networks to which its device is connected on behalf of the device, permitting the software to interact with other servers in the current sub-network. That is, it can test software designed to run on a wireless device in the same way as if the software were disconnected from the network, moved with the device, and reconnected to and operated on another network. Also described are the lessons learned from exploiting the framework in developing typical software for wireless devices.