In this paper we study on-demand source initiated protocols for mobile wireless networks. In particular, we study the flooding procedure commonly used by these protocols to set up temporary communication paths. The benefit of the flooding technique is its generosity regarding changes in network structure. On the other hand, each time a message is sent, the entire network will be involved to set up the communication path from the source node to the target node. We propose a new approach, which we call limited broadcasting. It is aimed to reduce the overhead by localizing the search for the target node both in terms of the time the process needs to globally stop after the target has been reached and/or in terms of the region which is affected by the search. It works in unknown networks and does not need any kind of additional information.