Formal Specification Based Automatic Test Generation for Embedded Network Systems

Abstract

Embedded systems have become increasingly connected and communicate with each other, forming large-scaled and complicated network systems. To make their design and testing more reliable and robust, this paper proposes a formal specification language called $\mathsf{SENS}$ and a $\mathsf{SENS}$-based automatic test generation tool called $\mathsf{TGSENS}$. Our approach is summarized as follows: (1) A user describes requirements of target embedded network systems by logical property-based constraints using $\mathsf{SENS}$. (2) Given $\mathsf{SENS}$ specifications, test cases are automatically generated using a SAT-based solver. Filtering mechanisms to select efficient test cases are also available in our tool. (3) In addition, given a testing goal by the user, test sequences are automatically extracted from exhaustive test cases. We’ve implemented our approach and conducted several experiments on practical case studies. Through the experiments, we confirmed the efficiency of our approach in design and test generation of real embedded air-conditioning network systems.