A novel adaptive and distributed fair scheduling (ADFS) scheme for ad hoc wireless networks is presented. Since fairness is an important issue in wireless networks when the nodes access a shared channel, the proposed ADFS protocol allocates the channel bandwidth in proportion to the weight of the packet flows. The weights are initially assigned using the user specified quality-of-service (QoS). Then the weights are updated as a function of delay experienced, number of packets in the queue, and previous weight of the packet. The backoff interval is also altered using the weight update equation. The weight update and the backoff interval selection ensure that global fairness is attained even with variable service rates. The NS results demonstrate a better fairness index, higher aggregate throughput, and minimum delay variations compared to other available schemes like DFS and IEEE 802.11 protocol.