Connectivity Testing Through Model-Checking

In this paper we show how to automatically generate test sequences that are aimed at testing the interconnections of embedded and communicating systems. Our proposal is based on the connectivity fault model proposed by [8], where faults may occur in the interface between the software and its environment rather than in the software implementation. We show that the test generation task can be carried out by solving a reachability problem in a system consisting essentially of a specification of the communicating system and its fault model. Our technique can be applied using most off-the-shelf model-checking tools to synthesize minimal test sequences, and we demonstrate it using the UppAal real-time model-checker. We present two algorithms for generating minimal tests: one for single faults and one for multiple faults. Moreover, we demonstrate how to exploit the unique timeand cost-planningfacilities of UppAal to derive cheapest possible test suites for restricted types of timed systems.