Deployment of traditional peer-to-peer file sharing systems on a wireless ad-hoc network introduces several challenges. Information and workload distribution as well as routing are major problems for members of a wireless ad-hoc network, which are only aware of their immediate neighborhood. In this paper, we propose a file sharing system that is able to answer location queries, and also discover and maintain the routing information that is used to transfer files from a source peer to another peer. We present a cross-layer design, where the lookup and routing functionality are unified. The system works according to peer-to-peer principles, distributes the location information of the shared files among the members of the network. The paper includes a sample scenario to make the operations of the system clearer. The performance of the system is evaluated using simulation results and analysis is provided for comparing our approach with a flooding-based, unstructured approach. © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.