2021/01/13 by Oscar Cornejo, Cornejo, Oscar, Fabrizio Pastore +3 · 2 citations
Computer Science · #Software Reliability and Analysis Research #Software Testing and Debugging Techniques #Software System Performance and Reliability
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2101.05111
On-board embedded software developed for spaceflight systems (space software)\nmust adhere to stringent software quality assurance procedures. For example,\nverification and validation activities are typically performed and assessed by\nthird party organizations. To further minimize the risk of human mistakes,\nspace agencies, such as the European Space Agency (ESA), are looking for\nautomated solutions for the assessment of software testing activities, which\nplay a crucial role in this context.\n Over the years, mutation analysis has shown to be a promising solution for\nthe automated assessment of test suites; it consists of measuring the quality\nof a test suite in terms of the percentage of injected faults leading to a test\nfailure. A number of optimization techniques, addressing scalability and\naccuracy problems, have been proposed to facilitate the industrial adoption of\nmutation analysis. However, to date, two major problems prevent space agencies\nfrom enforcing mutation analysis in space software development.\n In this paper, we enhance mutation analysis optimization techniques to enable\ntheir applicability to embedded software and propose a pipeline that\nsuccessfully integrates them to address scalability and accuracy issues in this\ncontext, as described above. Further, we report on the largest study involving\nembedded software systems in the mutation analysis literature. Our research is\npart of a research project funded by ESA ESTEC involving private companies\n(GomSpace Luxembourg and LuxSpace) in the space sector. These industry partners\nprovided the case studies reported in this paper; they include an on-board\nsoftware system managing a microsatellite currently on-orbit, a set of\nlibraries used in deployed cubesats, and a mathematical library certified by\nESA.\n