Software analysis methods for resource-sensitive systems

Abstract

Practically every modern electronic device is controlled by software. It is important to establish certain quality characteristics of this software. In his dissertation, Rody Kersten presents innovative analysis methods towards this end. These semi-automatic methods go beyond the validation of input-output behaviour and concerns mostly non-functional properties. The focus is on properties that are of specific importance for embedded systems, such as wireless sensor nodes. For instance, energy-efficiency and security are studied. Embedded systems often have only a limited amount of energy, memory and time available. Methods have been developed that can bound consumption of these resources. During an internship at the NASA Langley Research Center, Kersten developed a method that guarantees high coverage of tested code by a generated test-set. All developed automatic analysis methods are implemented in open-source tools