Unification of Finite Failure Non-Homogeneous Poisson Process Models through Test Coverage

A number of analytical software reliability models have been proposed for estimating the reliability growth of a software product. In this paper we present an Enhanced non-homogeneous Poisson process (ENHPP) model and show that previously reported NonHomogeneous Poisson Process (NHPP) based models, with bounded mean value functions, are special cases of the ENHPP model. The ENHPP model differs from previous models in that it incorporates explicitly the timevarying test-coverage function in its analytical formulation, and provides for defective fault detection and test coverage during the testing and operational phases. The ENHPP model is validated using several available failure data sets. This work was supported in part by the US AIR FORCE Rome Laboratory as a core project in the Center for Advanced Computing and Communication and by a contract from the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory. 1 Introduction The past several years have seen the formulation of numerous analytical models fo..