Social context‐aware macroscopic routing scheme for opportunistic network

Opportunistic networks (OppNets) have attracted widespread attention as wireless technologies have advanced. OppNets are widely used in delay‐tolerant applications because they route messages using a store‐carry‐forward mechanism. Recently, socially aware routing has been increasingly modeled for message dissemination in OppNets, where the message is routed selectively through cooperative nodes based on user interests; however, routing becomes extremely difficult as node density and data size increase. However, the current method fails to reduce data redundancy, message overhead, delay, and improve performance efficiency. To address the issues, this article proposes social context‐aware microscopic routing (SCAMR) for OppNets. SCAMR uses cluster‐based communication, novel social‐context association mapping, and an improved lost packet retrieval mechanism with minimal messaging overhead. In this work, the experiment was performed by considering three scenarios: varying node size, varying buffer size, and varying time‐to‐live size. The experimental results show that the SCAMR scheme improves delivery ratio by 71.25%, 67.87%, 69.18%, reduces delay by 33.93%, 26.68%, 35.36%, reduces the number of hop nodes (i.e., messaging overhead) by 77.84%, 71.53%, 76.04% over existing approaches namely, SCARF (SoCial‐Aware Reliable Forwarding Technique for Vehicular Communications), SRS (secure routing strategy), and EDT (effective data transmission) considering different scenarios, respectively. Wireless technology has increased interest in opportunistic networks (OppNets). Store‐carry‐forward routing makes OppNets popular in delay‐tolerant applications. Recently, socially aware routing has been widely developed for message dissemination in OppNets, where the message is routed selectively through cooperative nodes based on user interests. However, routing becomes incredibly complex as node density and data size increase. Current methods fail to reduce data redundancy, message overhead, delay, and performance efficiency. social context‐aware microscopic routing (SCAMR) for OppNets addresses the difficulties. SCAMR employs cluster‐based communication with unique social‐context association mapping and a reduced messaging overhead lost packet retrieval technique. Compared to recent routing approaches, the SCAMR scheme has a better delivery ratio, less delay, and fewer packet forwarders, reducing messaging overhead.