Meta-Heuristic Algorithm for Constructing Higher-Index Covering Arrays for Combinatorial Interaction Testing

A covering array is a mathematical object commonly used to represent a test suite for combinatorial interaction testing (CIT). Covering array generation has been extensively studied in the past two decades, and most of these studies considered cases in which each interaction was covered at least once. However, when one needs to test each interaction more than once, it is necessary to generate a higher-index covering array in which each interaction is covered twice or more. The generation of higher- index covering arrays has rarely been studied. In this paper, we proposed a meta-heuristic algorithm to generate higher- index covering arrays. We conducted experiments to compare the proposed algorithm with existing algorithms. The experimental results demonstrated that the proposed algorithm can generate smaller higher-index covering arrays than existing algorithms.