Test Coverage Analysis and Preservation for Requirements-Based Testing of Safety-Critical Systems

The testing process for safety-critical systems is usually evaluated with code coverage criteria such as MC/DC (Modified Condition/Decision Coverage) defined in the standard DO-178B, Software Considerations in Airborne Systems and Equipment Certification (a de-facto standard for certifying software in the civil avionic domain). For requirements-based testing techniques we work on coverage metrics that are defined on a higher level of program representation (eg on the requirements), and that are independent of a specific implementation. For that purpose we analyse the relationship between existing definitions for structural requirement-coverage metrics and structural code-coverage metrics. In addition, we work on techniques that preserve structural codecoverage between different program-representation levels.