Energy-directed test suite optimization

Abstract

Post-deployment in situ testing and validation techniques have become an important means of ensuring the reliability of mobile and embedded systems. However, these techniques do not take into consideration the amount of energy they consume, which is an issue of paramount concern for systems with limited energy budgets. In this paper we propose a new test suite minimization approach that allows developers to generate energy-efficient, minimized test suites. The approach is based on encoding minimization problems as integer linear programming problems. Our empirical evaluation shows that, compared to traditionally generated minimized test suites, the test suites generated by our approach are equally effective in terms of their test coverage, but can realize energy savings of up to 90 %.