Fault coverage

About: Fault coverage is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 10153 publications have been published within this topic receiving 161933 citations. The topic is also known as: test coverage.

A Comparison of Test Case Prioritization Criteria for Software Product Lines

Abstract: Software Product Line (SPL) testing is challenging due to the potentially huge number of derivable products. To alleviate this problem, numerous contributions have been proposed to reduce the number of products to be tested while still having a good coverage. However, not much attention has been paid to the order in which the products are tested. Test case prioritization techniques reorder test cases to meet a certain performance goal. For instance, testers may wish to order their test cases in order to detect faults as soon as possible, which would translate in faster feedback and earlier fault correction. In this paper, we explore the applicability of test case prioritization techniques to SPL testing. We propose five different prioritization criteria based on common metrics of feature models and we compare their effectiveness in increasing the rate of early fault detection, i.e. a measure of how quickly faults are detected. The results show that different orderings of the same SPL suite may lead to significant differences in the rate of early fault detection. They also show that our approach may contribute to accelerate the detection of faults of SPL test suites based on combinatorial testing.

Data-Driven Fault Detection in Aircraft Engines With Noisy Sensor Measurements

Abstract: An inherent difficulty in sensor-data-driven fault detection is that the detection performance could be drastically reduced under sensor degradation (e.g., drift and noise). Complementary to traditional model-based techniques for fault detection, this paper proposes symbolic dynamic filtering by optimally partitioning the time series data of sensor observation. The objective here is to mask the effects of sensor noise level variation and magnify the system fault signatures. In this regard, the concepts of feature extraction and pattern classification are used for fault detection in aircraft gas turbine engines. The proposed methodology of data-driven fault detection is tested and validated on the Commercial Modular Aero-Propulsion System Simulation (C-MAPSS ) test-bed developed by NASA for noisy (i.e., increased variance) sensor signals.

Fault localization based on information flow coverage

Abstract: Failures triggered by hard to debug defects usually involve complex interactions between many program elements. This paper hypothesizes that information flows present a good model for such interactions and presents a new fault localization technique based on information flow coverage. Using a test suite, the technique ranks the statements in a program in terms of their likelihood of being faulty by comparing the information flows induced by the failing runs with the ones induced by the passing runs. The ranking of the statements associated with a given flow is primarily determined by contrasting the percentage of failing runs to the percentage of passing runs that induced it. Generally, a higher percentage of failing runs implies a higher rank. To show its potential, the technique was applied to several open-source Java programs and was compared, with respect to its fault localization effectiveness, with three other coverage techniques that use similar style metrics that are defined for statements, branches, and def–use pairs, respectively. The results revealed that information flow, branch, and def–use coverage performed consistently better than statement coverage. In addition, in a considerable number of cases information flow coverage performed better than branch and def–use coverage. Specifically, it was always safer but not always more precise. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. This paper presents a new fault localization technique based on information flow coverage. The technique was compared to three other coverage techniques that use similar style metrics that are defined for statements, branches and def-use pairs, respectively. The results revealed that information flow, branch, and def-use coverage performed consistently better than statement coverage, and in a considerable number of cases information flow coverage performed better than branch and def-use coverage. Specifically, it was always safer but not always more precise. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Method and apparatus for recovering from software faults

Abstract: A method for recovering from software fault in a fault tolerant computing system includes a system status recording step to record the system status at the occurrence of the above software fault when the above fault is judged to be a software fault by a fault identifying step, a software fault factor diagnosing step to diagnose the fault factor of the above software fault, a software fault recovery action determining step to determine a recovery action to the above fault factor of the above software fault, and a software fault recovery action executing step to execute the recovery action the above fault factor of the above software fault determined by the above software fault recovery action determining step after roll back.

Apparatus and method for automatic test generation and fault simulation of electronic circuits, based on programmable logic circuits

Abstract: An electronic circuit test vector generation and fault simulation apparatus is constructed with programmable logic devices (PLD) or field programmable gate array (FPGA) devices and messaging buses carrying data and function calls. A test generation and fault simulation (TGFS) comparator is implemented in the PLD or FPGA consisting of a partitioned sub-circuit configuration, and a multiplicity of copies of the same configuration each with a single and different fault introduced in it. The method for test vector generation involves determining test vectors that flag each of the fault as determined by a comparison of the outputs of the good and single fault configurations. Further the method handles both combinational as well as sequential type circuits which require generating a multiplicity of test vectors for each fault. The successful test vectors are now propagated to the inputs and outputs of the electronic circuit, through driver and receiver sub-circuits, modeled via their corresponding TGFS comparators, by means of an input/output/function messaging buses. A method of fault simulation utilizing the TGFS comparators working under a fault specific approach determines the fault coverage of the test vectors.