In mobile ad hoc networks, each node acts as both host and router and performs all the routing and state maintenance. Due to the unpredictable movement of mobile nodes, the network topology of a mobile ad hoc network changes frequently. It will directly cause the routes to be broken and greatly degrade the network performance. In this paper we propose a novel Multiple Criteria approach for routing algorithm in mobile ad hoc networks, called Multiple Criteria AODV (MAODV). The proposed scheme uses the Multiple Criteria-based route strategy to select a stable route in order to enhance system performance. The Criteria of a route is decided by eight factors: the speed of nodes, the power level of battery, the Bandwidth, the RADIO-RX-SENSITIVITY, the RADIO-ANTENNA-GAIN, the PROPAGATION-LIMIT, the Frequency and the hop count. Our study also compares the performance of the MAODV protocol with the well-known Ad hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV) protocol. Results obtained by a simulation campaign show that MAODV allows obtaining some important advantages that makes it a valuable candidate to operate expenses of the optimality of the solution, it results to be particularly suitable in environments where minimum signalling overhead are requested. Also simulation results show the improvement of the network performance, in terms of throughput, delay, route discovery time, data dropped and number of hops per route, when applying our algorithm to the AODV routing protocol.