The University of British Columbia

Most current routing protocols for mobile ad hoc networks consider the shortest path with minimum hop counts at the optimal route. However, the minimum end-to-end delay from source to destination may not always be achieved through this shortest path. In this paper, we propose an efficient delay-based load-aware on-demand routing (D-LAOR) protocol, which determines the optimal path based on the estimated total path delay and the hop count. We demonstrate the effectiveness of D-LAOR by integrating it with the ad hoc on-demand distance vector (AODV) routing protocol. Simulation results obtained suing the ns-2 network simulation platform, show that D-LAOR scheme increases packet delivery fraction and decreases end-to-end delay by more than 10% in a moderate network scenario when compared with the original AODV ad the other LAOR protocols.