Enhanced modified condition/decision coverage using exclusive-nor code transformer

In regulated domains such as aerospace and safety critical domains, software quality assurance is subjected to strict regulations such as the DO-178B standard. MC/DC is a white box software testing criteria aiming to prove all the conditions involved in a predicate that can influence the predicate value in the desired way. Though MC/DC is a coverage criterion, existing automated test data generation approaches like CONCOLIC testing do not support MC/DC. In this paper, we propose an automated technique to generate a test suite that helps in achieving an increase in MC/DC coverage of a program under test. We use code transformation technique which consists of two steps: identification of predicates and generation of empty true-false if-else statements. The empty conditional statements are based on the concepts of exclusive nor (X-NOR) operations. This transformed program is inserted into the CREST TOOL. It drives CREST TOOL to generate test suite and increase the MC/DC coverage. Our technique helps to achieve a significant increase in MC/DC coverage as compared to traditional CONCOLIC testing.