# Refining the In-Parameter-Order Strategy for Constructing Covering Arrrays

Published: September 01, 2008

### Author(s)

Michael Forbes, James F. Lawrence, Yu Lei, Raghu N. Kacker, David R. Kuhn

### Abstract

Covering arrays are structures for well-representing extremely large input spaces and are used to efficiently implement blackbox testing for software and hardware. This paper proposes refinements over the In-Parameter-Order strategy (for arbitrary $t$). When constructing homogeneous-alphabet covering arrays, these refinements reduce runtime in nearly all cases by a factor of more than 5 and in some cases by factors as large as 280. This trend is increasing with the number of columns in the covering array. Moreover, the resulting covering arrays are about 5% smaller. Consequently, this new algorithm has constructed many covering arrays that are the smallest in the literature. A heuristic variant of the algorithm sometimes produces comparably sized covering arrays while running significantly faster.
Citation: Journal of Research (NIST JRES) -
Volume: 113
Issue: 5
Pub Type: NIST Pubs

### Keywords

blackbox testing, covering arrays, pairwise and higher strength testing
Created September 01, 2008, Updated November 10, 2018