Technical Articles

Requirements Modeling and Automated Requirements-Based Test Generation

By John Lee and Jon Friedman, MathWorks


For many mission critical systems, demonstrating that all requirements have been met via a set of requirements-based tests is often mandated by internal processes or external standards. Determining whether a given set of test vectors covers the design requirements (as opposed to merely covering the design) is a challenge.

This paper shows how requirements captured in a natural language can be modeled using cause-effect graphs, which are then imported into Simulink® and Stateflow® to identify conflicting requirements and generate a set of test vectors that can be assessed for completeness using coverage objectives such as modified condition/decision coverage (MCDC). The same test vectors are applied to the design model, which can be developed independently from the original requirements. This approach enables engineers to determine whether their design is sufficiently covered by the set of requirements-based test vectors.

Copyright © 2014 by The MathWorks, Inc. Published by SAE International, with permission.

This paper was presented at SAE 2013 AeroTech Congress&Exhibition

Read full paper.

Published 2013

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