Abstract: In order to select the best cost route and balance the traffic loads distributed in ad hoc networks, a cross-layer load-aware and bidirectional path re-selection based load-balanced routing (CLBLR) algorithm combines the total path average estimated delay with the total path traffic loads as the primary metric for route selection and route adjustment, and re-selects route bi-directionally during the route discovery as well as route maintenance periods. Besides, the protocol utilizes the updated load information during the route discovery period by forbidding the intermediate nodes to reply the route request packets and avoid the heavy load nodes to be the intermediate nodes of new routes by dropping the route request packets, which can endue the protocol with capability of congestion control and admission control. With the above properties, the protocol can bring down the congested nodes and bottlenecks in the networks, and improve the network performance. Simulation results show that the CLBLR results in good performance of packet delivery ratio, average end-to-end delay and routing overhead, exhibiting many attractive features of distributed control to adapt to the dynamic ad hoc networks.