Patent ID: 8509105

Claim:
A method comprising: broadcasting from a user equipment (UE) a beacon comprising a beacon flame comprising a plurality of beacon fields; receiving in response to the beacon at least one request from at least one neighbor device to trigger handshake signaling to establish a device to device (D2D) connection; responding to one of the at least one request including at least an identifier of the UE to confirm the D2D connection with the neighbor device; discovering available resources from the beacon; obtaining from the beacon at least one of a spectrum usage status and a priority for the available resources; and exchanging information on the discovered available resources in the handshake signaling with the neighbor device, wherein the available resource is an FSU resource and further comprising: receiving a flexible spectrum usage (FSU) beacon from the neighbor device; and decoding the received FSU beacon if a periodicity of the FSU beacon is unknown, and wherein discovering the available resources further comprises: a) selecting a supported frequency band; b) scanning each of frequency channels within the selected frequency band; c) measuring an interference for the selected channel; d) identifying the selected channel as an available FSU candidate channel if the measured interference meets a specified criterion; and e) repeating steps a) though d) until a termination criterion is met; wherein exchanging with the neighbor device the information of the discovered available resources further comprises exchanging network type information.