Predicting software reliability with neural network ensembles

Software reliability is an important factor for quantitatively characterizing software quality and estimating the duration of software testing period. Traditional parametric software reliability growth models (SRGMs) such as nonhomogeneous Poisson process (NHPP) models have been successfully utilized in practical software reliability engineering. However, no single such parametric model can obtain accurate prediction for all cases. In addition to the parametric models, non-parametric models like neural network have shown to be effective alternative techniques for software reliability prediction. In this paper, we propose a non-parametric software reliability prediction system based on neural network ensembles. The effects of system architecture on the performance are investigated. The comparative studies between the proposed system with the single neural network based system and three parametric NHPP models are carried out. The experimental results demonstrate that the system predictability can be significantly improved by combing multiple neural networks.