Genetic algorithm for path-based testing of component outage situations in IoT system processes

Abstract

Component outages often affect IoT system operations and processes. These components can be physical devices, infrastructure parts, or system modules. Among other possible causes, outages are often due to limited or intermittent network connectivity. To ensure reliable operations, connection outage scenarios must be reviewed systematically, which is especially important for critical systems. Path-based testing techniques are preferable for this task, as they sequence events in the system and, therefore, allow to verify the effects of the limited network connectivity on the system processes. Because the available path-based testing techniques provide only a limited ability to solve this problem effectively, in this study, we propose an adaptation of a genetic algorithm to generate specialized test paths from a model that captures the system under test processes. Compared with the four path-based testing alternatives for solving the testing problem, the proposed algorithm yielded the best results in all four defined test set metrics for the two defined test coverage criteria. Regarding the average total length of the test paths, which served as a proxy for testing costs, those produced by the proposed adapted genetic algorithm outperformed the best of the proposed baselines by 23.5% and 29% for individual test coverage criteria.