A Formal Analysis of MCDC and RCDC Test Criteria Kalpesh Kapoor Jonathan P. Bowen Centre for Applied Formal Methods Faculty of BCIM, 103 Borough Road London South Bank University, London SE1 0AA. UK {kapoork, bowenjp}@lsbu.ac.uk Abstract Modified Condition Decision Coverage (MCDC) test criterion is a mandatory requirement for the testing of avionics software as per the DO-178B standard. This paper presents a formal analysis for the three different forms of MCDC. In addition, a recently proposed test criterion, Reinforced Condition Decision Coverage (RCDC), has also been inves- tigated in comparison with MCDC. In contrast with the earlier analysis approaches that have been based on empirical and probabilistic models, the principles of Boolean logic are used here to study the fault detection effectiveness of MCDC and RCDC criteria. Based on the properties of Boolean specifications, the analysis identifies the detection conditions for six kinds of faults. The results allow measurement of effort required in testing and the effectiveness of generated test sets satisfying the MCDC and RCDC criteria. Keywords: Structural coverage analysis, Control-flow test criteria, Formal analysis, MCDC, RCDC, Boolean specifications 1