COFI: UMA ABORDAGEM COMBINANDO TESTE DE CONFORMIDADE E INJEÇÃO DE FALHAS PARA VALIDAÇÃO DE SOFTWARE EM APLICAÇÕES ESPACIAIS

In order to reduce costs and decrease the number of space mission incidents this dissertation proposes a software test process and methodology. Following the standardization trend of software in space application, conformance testing will be of interest in such applications in the near future; as was the case for telecommunications when, in 1980`s, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) established the ISO conformance testing standard IS-9646. To complement the conformance validation and to take into account the consequences space applications software suffers from the environment radiation, the fault injection technique was adopted. In this dissertation, the test process is based on the IS-9646 and it embraces a test methodology that guides test designing. Both the process and the test methodology are named CoFI, as they combine conformance testing and fault injection. The main characteristic of the methodology is to deal with faults that mimic problems caused by the space radiation environment that affects computational communication on board of satellites. Another feature is to use formal methods and UML artifacts in order to allow automation. Side effects such as the test number explosion of using formal methods are mitigated with normal and exceptional behavior representation into distinct models. The CoFI test sequence is empirically evaluated in three real applications: a standardized service of the ECSS-E-70-41A for ground-board communication, an on-board communication protocol and a ground, Control Centre and ground station, protocol. The last two applications have been used in INPE`s scientific satellite missions. An analysis of the CoFI test sequence efficiency related to the adequacy criteria of finite state machine mutation faults was performed. Results have shown a competitive and efficient methodology for real space projects. Although the CoFI approach is focused on satellite on-board communication software validation, it is not restricted to this kind of application.