[Paper] Characterizing Tests in IoT Software: Practices, Challenges and Opportunities

Source: arXiv - 2606.12592v1

Overview

The Internet of Things (IoT) is experiencing rapid growth. Smart devices are emerging in smart homes and industrial applications, performing mission-critical tasks. Bugs in IoT software can lead to severe consequences. For example, a buggy smart lock can allow unauthorized access to a private property. Testing is a primary practice to expose software bugs and ensure software quality. However, little is known about how IoT software is tested. To bridge this gap, we conducted the first empirical study on test cases in open-source IoT software. Specifically, we evaluated the effectiveness of test cases in IoT software, explored the challenges inherent in testing IoT software, and analyzed the usage of mock objects. Our results indicate that while IoT software often contains a considerable number of tests, their effectiveness remains limited. We identified the primary challenges in testing IoT software as managing complex interactions with various external dependencies, such as other network-reliant IoT components, file systems, operating systems, and databases. We also observed that the use of mock objects in IoT software closely aligns with our identified testing challenges. This alignment demonstrates the potential of mocking as a solution to enhance test coverage and address the complexities of IoT software testing.

Key Contributions

This paper presents research in the following areas:

• cs.SE

Methodology

Please refer to the full paper for detailed methodology.

Practical Implications

This research contributes to the advancement of cs.SE.

Authors

• Rufeng Chen
• Hengcheng Zhu
• Wuqi Zhang
• Zixu Zhou
• Lili Wei

Paper Information

• arXiv ID: 2606.12592v1
• Categories: cs.SE
• Published: June 10, 2026
• PDF: Download PDF