Routing protocols are crucial in delivering packets from source to destination in scenarios where destinations are not directly within the sender’s range. Various routing protocols employ different strategies, but their presence is indispensable for seamless data transfer from source to destination. Multipath routing, while offering load balancing, often falls short in efficiently distributing the network’s load, thus adversely impacting the vital communication resource—energy—due to packet loss. This paper introduces an Energy-Efficient Load-Aware Routing (ELAM) scheme to enhance the routing performance of Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs). Our motivation stems from the observation that many multipath routing protocols are designed based on a single criterion, such as the shortest path, often neglecting load balancing or energy conservation. While the Ad Hoc On-Demand Multipath Distance Vector (AOMDV) protocol demonstrates improved performance compared to unipath routing schemes, achieving both load balancing and energy efficiency remains challenging. The proposed ELAM scheme considers energy conservation, the shortest path, and load balancing to enhance the performance of multipath routing protocols. ELAM considers the shortest path and energy conservation while accommodating more than two paths in a MANET. We introduce an energy factor that contributes to the network’s lifespan, with efficient load balancing enhancing the longevity of nodes and the overall network. The energy factor provides insights into the energy status, and we evaluate the performance of AODV, AOMDV, and the proposed ELAM. The results demonstrate that the proposed scheme outperforms existing protocols and effectively manages unnecessary energy consumption by mobile nodes. Our performance analysis reveals a minimum 5% improvement in throughput and Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR), indicating reduced packet dropping and network delays
