Patent · US Expired

Method and apparatus for generating conformance test data sequences

US5623499A · kind A · utility

27Cited by
7References
9Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventors

Key dates

Filing dateJun 27, 1994
Grant dateApr 22, 1997
Priority date
Expiry dateJun 27, 2014

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC H)Electricity
  • CPC primaryH04L9/40
  • WIPO fieldMeasurement
  • WIPO sectorInstruments

Abstract

A method and apparatus for generating a conformance test data sequence of minimal length to verify that a device conforms to a protocol entity which can be characterized by a simplified extended finite state machine. The method generates an expanded directed graph of the protocol wherein each state is represented by a state vertex and a dummy vertex which are connected to other similar state and dummy vertices by directed edges in a configuration corresponding to the operation of the machine. The directed edges are then assigned traversal numbers corresponding to the minimum number of times a respective directed edge need be traversed in order to test values in a predetermined test data set. The traversal numbers of the expanded directed graph are balanced to form a symmetric expanded directed graph. An Euler tour and a corresponding unique input-output sequence of the last state of the Euler tour are generated to form the conformance test data sequence. The generated conformance test data sequence exhaustively tests the values in the test data set, and achieves an efficiency in conformance testing by minimizing the amount of time required to perform the conformance test.

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.