Generating maximal fault coverage conformance test sequences of reduced length for communication protocols

This paper focuses on a technique to reduce the length of maximal fault coverage test sequences for communication protocols by removing redundant test segments. This approach conceptually begins with all the test segments needed for the generation of maximal fault coverage test sequences, analyzes the structure of the specified finite state machine for the protocol, and shows that certain segments in these tests are unnecessary to guarantee maximal fault coverage. From this analysis an algorithm is proposed for generating the reduced length sequences that still guarantee maximal fault coverage. The authors describe how these tests are in some sense minimal, or near minimal, length test sequences without losing fault coverage