In this paper we carry out a systematic study of a natural covering problem, used for identification across several areas, in the realm of parameterized complexity. In the Test Cover problem we are given a set [n] = {1,…,n} of items together with a collection, , of distinct subsets of these items called tests. We assume that is a test cover, i.e., for each pair of items there is a test in containing exactly one of these items. The objective is to find a minimum size subcollection of , which is still a test cover. The generic parameterized version of Test Cover is denoted by -Test Cover. Here, we are given and a positive integer parameter k as input and the objective is to decide whether there is a test cover of size at most . We study four parameterizations for Test Cover and obtain the following:

(a) k-Test Cover, and (n − k)-Test Cover are fixed-parameter tractable (FPT), i.e., these problems can be solved by algorithms of runtime , where f(k) is a function of k only.

(b) -Test Cover and (logn + k)-Test Cover are W[1]-hard. Thus, it is unlikely that these problems are FPT.