Software Reliability Modeling With Periodic Debugging Schedule

In this paper, we discuss continuous time periodic debugging of a software, in which faults are corrected, instead of at the instants of their detection, at some prespecified times. We describe maximum-likelihood estimation for the model parameters assuming exponential distribution for the time between successive occurrence of a fault, which can be used to estimate the reliability of the software. We also derive the asymptotic properties of the estimated model parameters, specially the number of faults initially present in the software. We investigate the finite sample properties of the estimators, specially that of the number of faults, through simulation. Finally, we analyze a dataset obtained from the testing of a flight control software.