Designing Fault Injection Experiments Using State-Based Model to Test a Space Software

Abstract

Software for space applications requires significant testing. This paper presents an evaluation of the CoFI testing methodology as applied to actual space software, where deterministic fault cases derived from state-based models were executed using the software-implemented fault injection technique. Different models were used to represent the behavior of embedded software in a real satellite computer under the presence of both normal inputs and external faults in communication, processor, and memory. CoFI methodology was used for model construction, the Condado tool for test derivation, and the QSEE-TAS tool for test execution. In total, 8,620% of 471 fault cases detected errors in the software; this is a very large number, and more so considering that the software had already been tested by the company which developed it before being subject the CoFI methodology.

Generating model-based test cases from natural language requirements for space application software

“…Conformance and Fault Injection (CoFI) is another model-based test case generation methodology (Ambrósio et al 2007). In CoFI, the system behavior is partially represented in state-transition diagrams representing FSMs, and test cases are generated based on such FSMs.…”

FSM-Based Test Case Generation Methods Applied to test the Communication Software on board the ITASAT University Satellite: a Case Study

“…In the experiences about applying CoFI described in Ambrosio et al (2007), Pontes et al (2009), Anjos et al (2011) and MattielloFrancisco et al (2013), the Condado tool was used to automate the test cases generation. In our work, the JPlavisFSM tool was used because it provides five different testing methods, including some variations that can be applied in partial FSM.…”

“…CoFI was firstly proposed to lead a tester to understand the problem well enough while creating a set of FSMs representing normal and abnormal behavior of software on-board a satellite. It defines detailed steps to apply FSM-based testing tools, in a systematic way and it has been applied in several cases (Ambrosio et al, 2007;Pontes et al, 2009;Anjos et al, 2011;Mattiello-Francisco et al, 2013). JPlavisFSM tool comprises not only four methods to automatically generate test cases starting from a given specification in FSM but also the Mutation Testing technique (Fabbri et al, 1994), that allows the adequacy evaluation of a test cases set.…”

On Comparing and Complementing two MBT approaches

“…Statecharts [4], [5] and Finite State Machines (FSMs) [6] are the main techniques used for modeling the behavior of the Implementation Under Test (IUT) for testing purposes. The application domain is software embedded into on-board computers of scientific satellites and balloons under development at INPE.…”