Estimation of Coverage Growth Functions

Abstract

A recent trend in software reliability engineering accounts for the coverage growth behavior during testing. The coverage growth function (representing the coverage growth behavior) has become an essential component of software reliability models. Application of a coverage growth function requires the estimation of the coverage growth function. This paper considers the problem of estimating the coverage growth function. The existing maximum likelihood method is reviewed and corrected. A method of minimizing the sum of squares of the standardized prediction error is proposed for situations where the maximum likelihood method is not applicable.