Mutant Equivalence as Monotonicity in Parametric Timed Games

Abstract

The detection of faults in software systems can be enhanced effectively by model-based mutation testing. The efficiency of this technique is hindered when mutants are equivalent to the original system model, since this makes them useless. Recently, the application of model-based mutation testing to real-time systems modelled as timed games has been investigated, which has resulted in guidelines for statically avoiding equivalent mutants.In this paper, we recast this problem into the framework of parametric timed games. We then prove a correspondence between theoretical results for the detection of equivalent mutants in timed games and the property of monotonicity that is known to hold for a sub-class of parametric timed games called L/U parametric timed games. The presented results not only simplify the theory underlying the detection of equivalent mutants in timed games, but at the same time they improve the expressiveness of a known decidable fragment of parametric timed games for which monotonicity holds.