Crow Search Optimization Based Approach for Parameter

Estimation of SRGMs
Ankur Chaudhary1, Arun Prakash Agarwal2, Arvind Rana3, Vijay Kumar4
1,2
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Amity University, Noida, India.
3
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Amity School of Engineering and Technology, Delhi, India.
4
Department of Applied Mathematics, Amity Institute of Applied Sciences, Amity University, Noida, India.
1
ankur.tomer@gmail.com; 2arun_pr_agrawal@yahoo.co.in,
3
arvind.rana1998@gmail.com; 4vijay_parashar@yahoo.com

Abstract: Software Reliability Growth Model (SRGM) is a
mathematical relation amidst the diverse attributes of testing
as it proceeds, and enables the estimation of the optimal time
of release, stop time for testing and numerous findings
related to software faults, failures and release policies.
However, parameter estimation of SRGMs is a challenging
task and plays an important role in predicting failure
behavior. The parameter estimation for a SRGM needs to be
addressed with utmost care as traditional parameter
estimation technique does not reflect consistency in
prediction. This paper presents an efficient approach for
parameter estimation of SRGMs using Crow Search
Optimization. Furthermore, we have compared the proposed
approach with traditional and genetic algorithm based
approaches .The results have been validated on a real data
set.
Keywords: Software Reliability; Testing; Parameter
estimation; SRGM; Crow Search Optimization.
I. INTRODUCTION
Software reliability quantifies the failure-free behavior of
software under specified environment for specified time
duration [1]. Estimation of software reliability during testing
phase helps managing various challenges in software
development phase viz. resource pool optimization, budget
management, and other scheduling activities. SRGMs help us
to predict future software failures so that precautionary
measures can be taken well in advance. SRGMs were broadly
classified into two types (i) Failure Rate model (FR) and (ii)
Non-Homogeneous Poisson Process model (NHPP). Literature
revealed that FR based SRGMs have an edge over NHPP
based SRGMs in few cases; however in others the latter were
found to be more meaningful and important [1–4,21-25].
NHPP models rely on factors such as fault content function,
testing time, and fault detection rate which express the
stochastic behavior of occurrence of software failures. NHPP
based models predict faults at specific point of time [1].
Prediction ability of any model depends on its parameter
values and hence SRGMs require an optimal parameter
estimation technique. Parameter estimation techniques namely
LSE – “Least Square Estimation” and MLE – “Maximum
Likelihood Estimation” have been proposed by researchers.
LSE method has been used widely for parameter estimation of
various engineering problems. LSE uses a form of nonlinear
regression [6] and works by following the below mentioned
basic steps:
x Initial inspection and pre-processing of sample data.
x Regression curve estimation.
x Analysis of confidence interval for sample data.
MLE is also widely used parameter estimation approach with
variance and unbiased estimators for a large sample size. It
chooses an estimator which is most likely to occur for all
possible data samples. MLE is slightly difficult to implement
as the likelihood equations used for MLE are solved
numerically [7].
The major issue for industry practitioners in applying MLE is
the complexity of its likelihood equations [8]. Wood et al.
[9]compared the relative performance of MLE and LSE using
an experiment with the assumption that errors of estimation are
normally distributed, and observed that MLE performs better
than LSE approach when sample size is large. However, both
of these are not the optimal choices for all types of problems
due to their own limitations such as: difficult implementation,
high biasedness in estimation particularly in case of MLE,
sensitivity of initialization of model parameter values [5].
Estimation of the unknown model parameters is an NP-hard
problem and requires a reliable optimization approach. The
software failures are stochastic in nature so the researchers aim
to estimate the optimal parameters for SRGMs so that failures
can be better mapped [5]. The aim of this study is to propose
an approach based on Crow Search Optimization for
estimation of optimal model parameters so that the model can
provide thebest output.The article is designed as: Section II
consists of Literature Review. Section III describes the Crow
search optimization. The results and discussion is augmented
in Section IV. Finally, in Section V the conclusion is drawn.

978-1-5386-9346-9/19/$31.00 ©2019 IEEE

II. LITERATURE REVIEW Step 3: Evaluate the fitness of each crow to achieve the
objective of missing unknown parameter.
Researchers have sought solutions to many complex
engineering optimization problems in various domains like Step 4: Repeat step 5, 6, 7 while itr<MI
software engineering, testing and reliability from several
natural phenomena. Nature has always been a great source of Step 5: Update the new position of each crow using following
inspiration to solve such complex problems resource condition.
scheduling, test effort estimation, test optimization and many
more [5, 10].Minohara et al. [11] utilized for the first time a
Genetic Algorithm(GA) based approach for parameter
estimation of SRGMs inspired from nature and found it more
stable than LSE based approach. Later on Sheta et al. [12] Step 5: check each updated crow position if updated position
investigated the use of particle swarm optimization (PSO) in cross the parameter boundary than persist previous position
solving parameter estimation problem of SRGMs. else updates the newly generated position to the last iteration
crow position.
Zhang et al. [13]further extended the work of Sheta et al. [12]
and proposed a PSO based parameter estimation approach with Step 6: Perform the memory updation for each crows follows:
slow convergence speed to search large solution space.
Aljahdali et al. [14] discussed a multi-objective GA for
parameter estimation of SRGMs. Hsu et al. [15] investigated
the use of Modified Genetic Algorithm (MGA) to estimate the
parameters of SRGMs. AL-Saati et al.[16] investigated the Step 7: Store the best position of crow in current iteration and
application of Cuckoo Search (CS) approach for parameter update itr=itr+1.
estimation.Kim et al. [6]used Real-Valued Genetic Algorithm
(RGA) for estimating parameters of SRGMs and found that
RGAperforms good than other variants of GA and
MGA.Choudhary et al.[5] proposed Gravitational search based
parameter estimation approach for SRGMs. Choudhary et
al.[17] Proposed approaches for parameter estimation of
SRGM using firefly optimization.

III. PROPOSED APPROACH

Crow search optimization (CSO) is best example of “Finding
Hidden Treasure”. We also utilized this intelligent behavior of
Crow to propose an effective parameter estimation approach
for SRGMs. various other intelligent behaviors evident from
the literature motivated us to utilized this metaheuristic[18].It
is evident from literature that CSO has various advantages over
traditional searching approaches [18].Some advantages are:

x More users friendly.

x Easy and effective implementation.
x Avoid premature convergence.
The proposed approach for parameter estimation of SRGM is
depicted in figure 1 and also given as follows:

Step 1: Formulation of fitness function and initialize the CSO

parameters such as problem dimension (pd), flock size, max
iteration (MI), length of flight (f_len) and probability of
awareness (PA).

Step 2: Randomly initialize the crow position and crow

memory for whole population in pd dimension. Here each
crow represents a possible solution set of unknown pd number Fig. 1. Parameter estimation of SRGM using CSO
of parameters of SRGMs.

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IV. RESULTS AND ANALYSIS TABLE 4: Proposed Algorithm’s Parameters

This section focuses primarily on the experimental setup, Crow Search Optimization Parameter Value
results and their discussion. We designed a robust and stable
experiment, selecting Goel-Okumoto(GO) model [19] and Problem Dimension (No. of decision variables)
2
Delayed S-Shaped [20]model on seven open and closed (PD)
software failure datasets listed in Table1 and Table 2 Population (Flock) Size (N) 100
respectively. The selected datasets as well as the models are
benchmarked and have been widely used for performance Awareness Probability (AP) 0.1
analysis of various parameter estimation approaches. Flight Length (FL) 2
TABLE1: Adopted SRGMs Maximum Number of iterations (i-max) 500

Number of To compare the approaches under study, we performed 30 runs

SRGM Mean Value Function
Parameters of each algorithm on each data set and for each performance
parameter. Thesummarized results are shown in Table 5 and 6
G-O where a > 0, b
2 below.
Model[19] >0
TABLE 5: Comparison of MSE values for proposed approach,
Delayed S- , where
2 GA and GSA [5]
Shaped[20] a > 0, b > 0
Data Set Model GA GSA Proposed
TABLE 2: Data Sets Used
G-O
42.8292 20.68638 19.01404
Model[19]
Total FC2[21]
Total Number of Delayed S-
Data Set Numbers of 16.54767466 7.490235 8.9703
Failures Shaped[20]
Weeks
G-O
FC2-Dataset[21] 54 10 22.8292 11.4848 8.709723
Model[19]
FC6[21]
FC6-DataSet[21] 73 8 Delayed S-
33.54767466 14.03783 14.09724
Shaped[20]
FC40-Dataset[21] 101 50
G-O
217.8292 51.42722 30.04411
DS1-Dataset[22] 100 20 Model[19]
FC40[21]
Delayed S-
DS2-DataSet[22] 176 18 44.54767466 18.85571 17.04411
Shaped[20]
STS-Dataset[23] 231 38 G-O
65.8292 41.64973 25.66361
Model[19]
TS-Dataset[24] 86 22 DS1[22]
Delayed S-
60.54767466 59.26688 59.66361
Shaped[20]
Further, we have selected traditional LSE approach, GA and
GSA based approaches to compare withproposed approach . G-O
1570.8292 367.8824 332.3972
Mean Square Error (MSE) and Theil Statistic (TS) as depicted Model[19]
DS2[22]
in Table 3 below are utilized as performance metrics. Delayed S-
948.54767466 214.7282 202.3972
Shaped[20]
TABLE 3: Performance Parameters
G-O
83.8292 41.19227 23.76615
Model[19]
S. Tohma[24]
Criteria Formula
No Delayed S-
32.54767466 9.607635 13.76596
Shaped[20]
1 Mean Square Error(MSE)
G-O
301.8292 27.8974 21.02108
Model[19]
2 Theil Statistic(TS) Mishra[23]
Delayed S-
2885.54767466 206.5113 201.021074
Shaped[20]
The Crow Search Optimization parameters selected to perform the
experiments listed in Table 4 below:

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 TABLE 7: Comparison of TS values for Proposed approach, GA
and GSA[5]

Data Set Model GA GSA Proposed

G-O
16.94935 12.35498 11.87616
Model[19]
FC2[21]
Delayed S-
14.81846 7.421363 7.7765
Shaped[20]
G-O
8.94935 6.332403 5.574428
Model[19]
FC6[21]
Delayed S-
9.81846 7.071327 7.084428
Shaped[20]
G-O
20.94935 10.34132 8.018943
Model[19]
FC40[21]
Delayed S-
9.81846 6.316877 8.018942
Shaped[20]
G-O
10.94935 8.452943 6.690614
Fig. 2. Comparative analysis of MSE values for Proposed Model[19]
approach, GA and GSA [5] DS1[22]
Delayed S-
9.81846 10.16031 10.46031
Shaped[20]
Table 5 shows the average of MSE values collected after 30
runs of each approach under study on seven datasets. The G-O
33.94935 15.88208 15.21154
Model[19]
results of MSE values as presented in the table and figure 2 DS2[22]
above reflect that the proposed approach performs well against Delayed S-
25.81846 12.20088 12.19154
GA and GSA based approach on all the datasets as Shaped[20]
summarized in Table 6. G-O
14.94935 10.40315 8.04195
Model[19]
Tohma[24]
TABLE 6: Summarized results of Proposed approach, GA and Delayed S-
GSA [5] 9.81846 5.079425 8.04192
Shaped[20]
G-O
Data Set Model Performed Well 38.94935 10.01629 8.316779
Model[19]
Mishra[23]
G-O Model[19] Proposed Approach Delayed S-
FC2[21] 34.81846 18.374149 18.31677
Shaped[20]
Delayed S-Shaped[20] GSA
G-O Model[19] Proposed Approach
FC6[21]
Delayed S-Shaped[20] Proposed Approach
G-O Model[19] Proposed Approach
FC40[21]
Delayed S-Shaped[20] Proposed Approach
G-O Model[19] Proposed Approach
DS1[22]
Delayed S-Shaped[20] Proposed Approach
G-O Model[19] Proposed Approach
DS2[22]
Delayed S-Shaped[20] Proposed Approach
G-O Model[19] Proposed Approach
Tohma[24]
Delayed S-Shaped[20] GSA
G-O Model[19] Proposed Approach
Mishra[23]
Delayed S-Shaped[20] Proposed Approach

Table7 shows the TS values on GA, GSA and proposed

approach. The figure 3 and table 7 reflect the superiority of Fig. 3. Comparative analysis of TS values for Proposed approach,
proposed approach over other implemented approaches. GA and GSA [5]

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V. CONCLUSION
Prediction of software reliability requires estimating the
parameters of the software reliability growth models.
Parameters of SRGMs generally follow non-linearity of failure
data. This in itself is a complex problem and hence requires
utilizing metaheuristic approaches. In this paper, we proposed
an effective crow search optimization based parameter
estimation approach and compared it with three other
approaches based on GA and GSA. Results obtained
wereencouraging and hencemotivate us to continue this study
with some more datasets and performance parameters to
confirm the validity of results.
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