OLSR is an optimization over classical link state protocols tailored for mobile ad hoc networks. In this paper, we propose the QOLSR protocol which includes quality parameters to the standard OLSR. Three variants of QOLSR are introduced, taking into account the delay measurement together with the hop count metric. Then, we analyze new heuristics for the multipoint relay selection, and evaluate our proposed approaches comparing them with the standard OLSR protocol. Simulation results show that an increased load-balancing and a reduced dropped packets rate are achieved due to the inclusion of the delay information. Ó 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.