A State-aware Approach for Robustness Testing of Embedded Real-Time Operating Systems

The Operating System (OS) is a major part of embedded software systems and its robustness has considerable influence on the robustness of the entire system. Thus, its robustness testing is critical for assessing the dependability of the system. In this paper, a state-aware approach is proposed to evaluate the robustness of components of embedded real-time OSs in the presence of different types of faulty inputs. This approach leads to identifying critical OS states, their criticality level, and the maximum and minimum level of the OS robustness. It also facilitates comparing the robustness level of OS’s components and helps the system developers to select the most appropriate fault tolerance techniques by considering the robustness level and timing limitations. The experimental results demonstrate the ability of the proposed approach in providing more information about the robustness vulnerabilities in the states of the system.