Abstract: Although, ad hoc on-demand distance vector (AODV) can respond a route quickly, it involves all the nodes in the network for path finding and yields a long delay when a route is rebuilt in dense networks. This is because when a node receives RREQ packet, it will try to find a path to the destination if it do not have one. Therefore many redundant RREQ packets are generated in the network. And when a source receives RRER packet an alternative routes are built as a new path discovery to the destination. We introduced a new route discovery and maintenance strategy by utilizing received signal strength information. The algorithm works by selectively rebroadcasting the RREQ packets during path discovery, in order to reduce the control packets in the network and introducing a new bridge node or handing off to a new node along the active path to prevent the link from failure. From the simulation result, the proposed algorithm improved the performance of Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) in terms of routing overhead, latency and throughput.