Specification Mutation Analysis for Validating Timed Testing Approaches Based on Timed Automata

Testing real-time systems is a non-trivial validation task, especially after adding time as a new dimension to its complexity. In previous research, we introduced a 'priority-based' approach which tested the logical and timing behaviour of real-time systems modelled formally as UPPAAL Timed Automata (UTA). In this paper, we validate the 'priority-based' approach with a comparison to four well-known timed testing approaches based on a Timed Automata (TA) formalism using Specification Mutation Analysis (SMA). We introduce a set of timed and functional mutation operators based on TA. Three case studies are used to run the mutation analysis and mutants are generated according to the proposed mutation operators. The effectiveness of timed testing approaches are determined and contrasted according to the mutation score; we show that our testing approach achieves high mutation adequacy score when compared with others.