Sequence covering arrays

• Main Authors: Colbourn, Charles J., Chee, Yeow Meng, Horsley, Daniel, Zhou, Junling
• Other Authors: School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: DRNTU::Science::Mathematics::Discrete mathematics
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/101415; http://hdl.handle.net/10220/18653
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Sequential processes can encounter faults as a result of improper ordering of subsets of the events. In order to reveal faults caused by the relative ordering of t or fewer of v events, for some fixed t, a test suite must provide tests so that every ordering of every set of t or fewer events is exercised. Such a test suite is equivalent to a sequence covering array, a set of permutations on v events for which every subsequence of t or fewer events arises in at least one of the permutations. Equivalently it is a (different) set of permutations, a completely t-scrambling set of permutations, in which the images of every set of t chosen events include each of the t! possible “patterns.” In event sequence testing, minimizing the number of permutations used is the principal objective. By developing a connection with covering arrays, lower bounds on this minimum in terms of the minimum number of rows in covering arrays are obtained. An existing bound on the largest v for which the minimum can equal t! is improved. A conditional expectation algorithm is developed to generate sequence covering arrays whose number of permutations never exceeds a specified logarithmic function of v when t is fixed, and this method is shown to operate in polynomial time. A recursive product construction is established when t = 3 to construct sequence covering arrays on vw events from ones on v and w events. Finally computational results are given for t ∈ {3,4,5} to demonstrate the utility of the conditional expectation algorithm and the product construction.