Current ad hoc wireless routing protocols typically select the route with the shortest-path or minimum hop count to the destination. However, routes chosen according to such criteria tend to include longer hop-length links with possibly bad signal quality. It is expected that the routing protocol can be improved by eliminating the usage of routes with bad links. In this work, we modify the ad hoc on-demand distance vector (AODV) routing protocol to avoid routing through bad quality links. We also integrate the "hand-off" concept into our protocol to prevent link breakages during route maintenance. The herein reported OPNET simulation results seem very promising and they show that our protocol introduces a much lower routing overhead while still providing equal or better performance than the original AODV protocol in terms of throughput and delay.