The Fifth International Conference on Advances in System Testing and Validation Lifecycle

VALID 2013
October 27 - November 1, 2013 - Venice, Italy

Complex distributed systems with heterogeneous interconnections operating at different speeds and based on various nano- and micro-technologies raise serious problems of testing, diagnosing, and debugging. Despite current solutions, virtualization and abstraction for large scale systems provide less visibility for vulnerability discovery and resolution, and make testing tedious, sometimes unsuccessful, if not properly thought from the design phase.

The conference on advances in system testing and validation considers the concepts, methodologies, and solutions dealing with designing robust and available systems. Its target covers aspects related to debugging and defects, vulnerability discovery, diagnosis, and testing.

The conference VALID 2013 continues a series of events focusing on designing robust components and systems with testability for varia features of behavior and interconnection. The conference will provide a forum where researchers shall be able to present recent research results and new research problems and directions related to them. The conference seeks contributions presenting novel result and future research in all aspects of robust design methodologies, vulnerability discovery and resolution, diagnosis, debugging, and testing.

We solicit both academic, research, and industrial contributions. We welcome technical papers presenting research and practical results, position papers addressing the pros and cons of specific proposals, such as those being discussed in the standard fora or in industry consortia, survey papers addressing the key problems and solutions on any of the above topics short papers on work in progress, and panel proposals.

Industrial presentations are not subject to the format and content constraints of regular submissions. We expect short and long presentations that express industrial position and status.

Tutorials on specific related topics and panels on challenging areas are encouraged.

The topics suggested by the conference can be discussed in term of concepts, state of the art, research, standards, implementations, running experiments, applications, and industrial case studies. Authors are invited to submit complete unpublished papers, which are not under review in any other conference or journal in the following, but not limited to, topic areas.

All topics and submission formats are open to both research and industry contributions.

Robust design methodologies
- Designing methodologies for robust systems
- Secure software techniques
- Industrial real-time software
- Defect avoidance
- Cost models for robust systems
- Design for testability
- Design for reliability and variability
- Design for adaptation and resilience
- Design for fault-tolerance and fast recovery
- Design for manufacturability, yield and reliability
- Design for testability in the context of model-driven engineering

Vulnerability discovery and resolution
- Vulnerability assessment
- On-line error detection
- Vulnerabilities in hardware security
- Self-calibration
- Alternative inspections
- Non-intrusive vulnerability discovery methods
- Embedded malware detection

Defects and Debugging
- Debugging techniques
- Component debug
- System debug
- Software debug
- Hardware debug
- System debug
- Power-ground defects
- Full-open defects in interconnecting lines
- Physical defects in memories and microprocessors
- Zero-defect principles

Diagnosis
- Diagnosis techniques
- Advances in silicon debug and diagnosis
- Error diagnosis
- History-based diagnosis
- Multiple-defect diagnosis
- Optical diagnostics
- Testability and diagnosability
- Diagnosis and testing in mo bile environments

System and feature testing
- Test strategy for systems-in-package
- Testing embedded systems
- Testing high-speed systems
- Testing delay and performance
- Testing communication traffic and QoS/SLA metrics
- Testing robustness
- Software testing
- Hardware testing
- Supply-chain testing
- Memory testing
- Microprocessor testing
- Mixed-signal production test
- Testing multi-voltage domains
- Interconnection and compatibility testing
- SAT procedures for application to testing and formal verification

Testing techniques and mechanisms
- Fundamentals for digital and analog testing
- Emerging testing methodologies
- Engineering test coverage
- Designing testing suites
- Statistical testing
- Functional testing
- Parametric testing
- Defect- and data-driven testing
- Automated testing
- Embedded testing
- Autonomous self-testing
- Low cost testing
- Optimized testing
- Testing systems and devices
- Test standards

Testing of wireless communications systems
- Testing of mobile wireless communication systems
- Testing of wireless sensor networks
- Testing of radio-frequency identification systems
- Testing of ad-hoc networks
- Testing methods for emerging standards
- Hardware-based prototyping of wireless communication systems
- Physical layer performance verification
- On-chip testing of wireless communication systems
- Modeling and simulation of wireless channels
- Noise characterization and validation
- Case studies and industrial applications of test instruments

Software verification and validation
- High-speed interface verification and fault-analysis
- Software testing theory and practice
- Model-based testing
- Verification metrics
- Service/application specific testing
- Model checking
- OO software testing
- Testing embedded software
- Quality assurance
- Empirical studies for verification and validation
- Software inspection techniques
- Software testing tools
- New approaches for software reliability verification and validation

Quality-assessment of software architectures and legacy systems
- Quality-Assessment of Software Architectures and Legacy systems
- Quality-assessment of software architectures
- Validation and verification of software architecture
- Automatic analysis of legacy code
- Strategies for isolating legacy code and improving the design quality
- Metrics for evaluating architectural quality characteristics
- Tools for quality assessments of software architectures
- Techniques and tools for testing legacy systems

Testing and validation of run-time evolving systems
- Automated testing for run-time evolving systems
- Testing and validation of evolving systems
- Testing and validation of self-controlled systems
- Testing compile-time versus run-time dependency for evolving systems
- On-line validation and testing of evolving at run-time systems
- Modeling for testability of evolving at run-time systems
- Near real-time and real-time monitoring of run-time evolving systems
- Verification and validation of reflective models for testing
- Verification and validation of fault tolerance in run-time evolving systems

Feature-oriented testing
- Testing user interfaces and user-driven features
- Privacy testing
- Ontology accuracy testing
- Testing semantic matching
- Testing certification processes
- Testing authentication mechanisms
- Testing biometrics methodologies and mechanisms
- Testing cross-nation systems
- Testing system interoperability
- Testing system safety
- Testing system robustness
- Testing temporal constraints
- Testing transaction-based properties
- Directed energy test capabilities /microwave, laser, etc./
- Testing delay and latency metrics;

Domain-oriented testing
- Testing autonomic and autonomous systems
- Testing intrusion prevention systems
- Firewall testing
- Information assurance testing
- Testing social network systems
- Testing recommender systems
- Testing biometric systems
- Testing diagnostic systems
- Testing on-line systems
- Testing financial systems
- Testing life threatening systems
- Testing emergency systems
- Testing sensor-based systems
- Testing testing systems


INSTRUCTION FOR THE AUTHORS

Authors of selected papers will be invited to submit extended versions to one of the IARIA Journals.

Publisher: XPS (Xpert Publishing Services)
Archived: ThinkMindTM Digital Library (free access)
Prints available at Curran Associates, Inc.
Articles will be submitted to appropriate indexes.

Important deadlines:
Submission (full paper) May 28, 2013
Notification July 15, 2013
Registration July 29, 2013
Camera ready July 29, 2013

Only .pdf or .doc files will be accepted for paper submission. All received submissions will be acknowledged via an automated system.

Regular Papers (up to 6-10 page article)

Final author manuscripts will be 8.5" x 11", not exceeding 6 pages; max 4 extra pages allowed at additional cost. The formatting instructions can be found on the Instructions page. Helpful information for paper formatting can be found on the here.

Your paper should also comply with the additional editorial rules.

Once you receive the notification of paper acceptance, you will be provided by the publisher an online author kit with all the steps an author needs to follow to submit the final version. The author kits URL will be included in the letter of acceptance.

We would recommend that you not use too many extra pages, even if you can afford the extra fees. No more than 2 papers per event are recommended, as each paper must be separately registered and paid for. At least one author of each accepted paper must register to ensure that the paper will be included in the conference proceedings.

Work in Progress (short paper up to 4 pages long)

Work-in-progress contributions are welcome. Please submit the contributions following the instructions for the regular submissions using the "Submit a Paper" button and selecting the contribution type as work in progress. Authors should submit a four-page (maximum) text manuscript in IEEE double-column format including the authors' names, affiliations, email contacts. Contributors must follow the conference deadlines, describing early research and novel skeleton ideas in the areas of the conference topics. The work will be published in the conference proceedings.


Posters (poster or collection of 6 to 8 slides)

Posters are intended for ongoing research projects, concrete realizations, or industrial applications/projects presentations. Acceptance will be decided based on a 1-2 page abstract and/or 6-8 .pdf slide deck submitted through the conference submission website. The poster may be presented during sessions reserved for posters, or mixed with presentation of articles of similar topic. The slides must have comprehensive comments. One big Poster and/or the associated slides should be used for discussions, once on the conference site.


Ideas (2 page proposal of novel idea)

This category is dedicated to new ideas in their early stage. Contributions might refer to PhD dissertation, testing new approaches, provocative and innovative ideas, out-of-the-box, and out-of-the-book thinking, etc. Acceptance will be decided based on a maximum 2 page submission through the conference submission website. The contributions for Ideas will be presented in special sessions, where more debate is intended. The Idea contribution must be comprehensive, focused, very well supported (details might miss, obviously). A 6-8 slide deck should be used for discussions, once on the conference site.


Technical marketing/industrial/business/positioning presentations

The conference initiates a series of business, technical marketing, and positioning presentations on the same topics. Speakers must submit a 10-12 slide deck presentations with substantial notes accompanying the slides, in the .ppt format (.pdf-ed). The slide deck will not be published in the conference’s CD Proceedings. Presentations' slide decks will be posted on the IARIA's site. Please send your presentations to petre@iaria.org.

Tutorials

Tutorials provide overviews of current high interest topics. Proposals should be for three hour tutorials. Proposals must contain the title, the summary of the content, and the biography of the presenter(s). The tutorials' slide decks will be posted on the IARIA's site. Please send your proposals to petre@iaria.org

Panel proposals

The organizers encourage scientists and industry leaders to organize dedicated panels dealing with controversial and challenging topics and paradigms. Panel moderators are asked to identify their guests and manage that their appropriate talk supports timely reach our deadlines. Moderators must specifically submit an official proposal, indicating their background, panelist names, their affiliation, the topic of the panel, as well as short biographies. The panel's slide deck will be posted on the IARIA's site.

For more information, petre@iaria.org

Workshop proposals

We welcome workshop proposals on issues complementary to the topics of this conference. Your requests should be forwarded to petre@iaria.org.