Test Data Generation for Multiple Paths Coverage Based on Ant Colony Algorithm

In order to improve the generation efficiency of multipath coverage test data, a novel method is proposed based on ant colony algorithm (ACO).Firstly, an improved ACO is developed.The importance of an ant to generate test data is considered as a factor for ant state transfer and path mutation.As a result, more ants are guided to traverse small probabilities node and the efficiency of test data generation is improved.Secondly, according to the improved ACO, test data generation of multipath coverage based on single pheromone table and multiple pheromone tables are proposed.In a multiple pheromones table based approach, the pheromone table of each target path is also used to generate test data for other target path, and the test data of multiple paths are generated by running ACO only once.Finally, the effectiveness and complexity of the proposed method are analyzed theoretically.Experimental results show that test data generation based on multi-pheromone tables can effectively generate multipath coverage test data compared with other methods. © 2020, Chinese Institute of Electronics. All right reserved.