Testing-resource allocation for redundant software systems

Abstract

For many safety critical systems, redundancy is the only acceptable method to achieve high operational reliability as individual modules can hardly be certified to have reached that level. When limited resources are available in the testing of a redundant software system, it is important to allocate the testing-time efficiently so that the maximum reliability of the complete system is achieved. In this paper, this problem is investigated in detail. A general formulation is presented and a specific case is used to illustrate the procedure. The case where individual module reliability requirements are given is also considered.