Effects of Mutation Testing on Safety Critical Software

Abstract: For avionic systems, the safety requirements are stricter than for non-safety critical systems due to the severe consequences a failure could cause. Depending on the consequences of a failure, the software needs to fulfill different testing criterias. More critical software needs more extensive testing. The question is whether the extra testing activities performed for software of higher criticality level results in discovery of more faults. Mutation testing has been used in this thesis as a method to evaluate the quality of test suites of avionic applications from different safety critical levels. The results showed that the extra activities performed at the higher levels do not necessarily result in finding more faults.