A parallel algorithm for the verification of Covering Arrays

Covering Arrays (CAs) are combinatorial objects that, with a small number of cases, cover a certain level of interaction of a set of parameters. CAs have found application in a variety of fields where interactions among factors need to be identified; some of these fields are biology, agriculture, medicine, and software and hardware testing. In particular, a covering array is an N × k matrix over an alphabet v s.t. each N × k subset contains at least one time each combination from {0, 1, ..., v − 1}, given a positive integer value t. The process of ensuring that a CA contains each of the v combinations is called verification of CA. When CAs have many variables or their strength is greater than 3, its verification is computationally very expensive. In this paper we present an algorithm for CA verification and its implementation details in sequential and parallel computing.