Test case generation of a communication protocol by an adaptive state exploration

Abstract

State exploration, which is widely used for generation of executable test cases for conformance test of a protocol, often causes state explosion problem. This paper proposes an adaptive state exploration method to overcome the problem for a single module protocol. Since state explosion arises in relation to the predicate, it tries to find out efficiently predicated transitions with priority by emulating the normal and erroneous communication environments closely related to the predicates. A test case generation method using the method is also proposed, which uses an Subdivided Extended Finite State Machine (SEFSM) as a protocol model to reduce semantic loss by modeling and adjusted UIO sequences for the protocol model. The empirical results of the proposed methods show their efficacy. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.