Beacon Management for Network Assisted Device-to-Device Communication

A first wireless communication device comprising:

• radio transceiver circuitry configured for cellular-radio and Device-to-Device (D2D) communications;
• and
• processing circuitry operatively associated with the radio transceiver circuitry and configured to:
• transmit an indication of D2D communication capabilities to a cellular radio access network;
• receive assistance information from the cellular radio access network to be used by the first wireless communication device for D2D peer discovery, the assistance information indicating a corresponding D2D identity and beacon-signal configuration information for each of one or more other wireless communication devices that are know n by the cellular radio access network to have D2D communication capabilities, wherein the beacon signal configuration information for each of the other wireless communication devices indicates corresponding radio resources to be used by the other wireless communication device for transmitting an associated D2D beacon signal to support D2D peer discovery;
• attempt to detect one or more of the one or more other wireless devices, based on monitoring the corresponding radio resources indicated by the beacon-signal configuration information, for reception of the associated D2D beacon signals;
• and
• responsive to detecting at least one of the one or more other wireless communication devices, select one of the detected other wireless communication devices for D2D communications with the first wireless communication device, in dependence on a corresponding radio link quality estimated for each detected other wireless communication device, from the first wireless communication device measuring a received signal strength of the associated D2D beacon signal.