Optimising the Reliability that Can Be Claimed for a Software-Based System Based on Failure-Free Tests of Its Components

Abstract

This paper describes a numerical method for optimising the conservative confidence bound on the reliability of a system based on statistical testing of its individual components. It provides an alternative to the sub-optimal test plan algorithms identified by the authors in an earlier research paper. For a given maximum number of component tests, this numerical method can derive an optimal test plan for any arbitrary system structure. The optimisation method is based on linear programming which is more efficient than the alternative integer programming approach. In addition, the optimisation process need only be performed once for any given system structure as the solution can be re-used to compute an optimal integer test plan for a different maximum number of component tests. This approach might have broader application to other optimisation problems.