Routing is a very important function in the network layer of the OSI model for wired and wireless networks. Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs) are a collection of wireless nodes forming a temporary network that is supposed to be constructed on the fly without infrastructure and prior setup. This fashion of setup demands that the nodes act as routers for other nodes. This necessitates the need of a robust dynamic routing scheme. Routing protocols are classified into three main categories: proactive, reactive, and hybrid. Reactive routing has been the focus of research in recent years due to its control traffic overhead reduction. Reactive routing operation involves three main steps: route discovery, packet delivery, and route maintenance. If a source node, initiating the message, knows the route to the destination, this route is used to transmit the message; otherwise, the source node will initiate a route discovery algorithm to build the route, which highlights the importance of this phase of the on-demand routing process. This thesis work will present a route discovery algorithm that will try to find the route between the sender and the intended receiver in relatively short periods of end-to-end delay, least amount of control traffic overhead, and a loop free path between the two communicating parties. Furthermore, performance comparison between the proposed algorithm and other standard algorithms, namely basic flooding and flooding with self-pruning, will be conducted. The proposed route discovery algorithm can be used in several approaches serving ad hoc network setup, where connectivity establishment and maintenance is important
