Context. The share and importance of software within automotive vehicles is growing steadily. Most functionalities in modern vehicles, especially safety related functions like advanced emergency braking, are controlled by software. A complex and common phenomenon in today’s automotive vehicles is the distribution of such software functions across several Electronic Control Units (ECUs) and consequently across several ECU system software modules. As a result, integration testing of these distributed software functions has been found to be a challenge. The automotive industry neither has infinite resources, nor has the time to carry out exhaustive testing of these functions. On the other hand, the traditional approach of implementing an ad-hoc selection of test scenarios based on the tester’s experience, can lead to test gaps and test redundancies. Hence, there is a pressing need within the automotive industry for a feasible and effective verification strategy for testing distributed software functions. Objectives. Firstly, to identify the current approach used to test the distributed automotive embedded software functions in literature and in a case company. Secondly, propose and validate a feasible and effective verification strategy for testing the distributed software functions that would help improve test coverage while reducing test redundan- cies and test gaps. Methods. To accomplish the objectives, a case study was conducted at Scania CV AB, Södertälje, Sweden. One of the data collection methods was through conducting interviews of different employees involved in the software testing activities. Based on the research objectives, an interview questionnaire with open-ended and close-ended questions has been used. Apart from interviews, data from relevant ar- tifacts in databases and archived documents has been used to achieve data triangulation. Moreover, to further strengthen the validity of the results obtained, adequate literature support has been presented throughout. Towards the end, a verification strategy has been proposed and validated using existing historical data at Scania. Conclusions. The proposed verification strategy to test distributed automotive embedded software functions has given promising results by providing means to identify test gaps and test redundancies. It helps establish an effective and feasible approach to capture function test coverage information that helps enhance the effectiveness of integration testing of the distributed software functions.
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