A fuzzy rule-based generation algorithm in interval type-2 fuzzy logic system for fault prediction in the early phase of software development

ABSTRACT

Reliability, a measure of software, deals in total number of faults count up to a certain period of time. The present study aims at estimating the total number of software faults during the early phase of software life cycle. Such estimation helps in producing more reliable software as there may be a scope to take necessary corrective actions for improving the reliability within optimum time and cost by the software developers. The proposed interval type-2 fuzzy logic-based model considers reliability-relevant software metric and earlier project data as model inputs. Type-2 fuzzy sets have been used to reduce uncertainties in the vague linguistic values of the software metrics. A rule formation algorithm has been developed to overcome inconsistency in the consequent parts of large number of rules. Twenty-six software project data help to validate the model, and a comparison has been provided to analyse the proposed model’s performance.

KEYWORDS:

• Interval type-2 fuzzy logic system
• fuzzy rule base
• software reliability
• early fault prediction

Acknowledgment

The authors are grateful to Prof. Oscar Castillo, Tijuana Institute of Technology, Mexico, for providing interval type-2 fuzzy logic MATLAB® toolbox.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.