AbstractThe limited scalability of the proactive and reactive routing protocols have resulted in the introduction of new generation of routing in mobile ad hoc networks, called hybrid routing. These protocols aim to extend the scalability of such networks beyond several hundred to thousand of nodes by defining a virtual infrastructure in the network. However, many of the hybrid routing protocols proposed to date are designed to function using a common pre‐programmed static zone map. Other hybrid protocols reduce flooding by grouping nodes into clusters, governed by a cluster‐head, which may create performance bottlenecks or a single point of failures at each cluster‐head node. We propose a new routing strategy in which zones are created dynamically, using a dynamic zone creation algorithm. Therefore, nodes are not restricted to a specific region. Additionally, nodes perform routing and data forwarding in a cooperative manner, which means that in the case failure, route recalculation is minimised. Routing overheads are also further reduced by introducing a number of GPS‐based location tracking mechanisms, which reduces the route discovery area and the number of nodes queried to find the required destination. Copyright © 2006 AEIT