An example apparatus for control channel determination and detection in an opportunistic wireless network environment is provided and includes a processor; and a memory in communication with the processor. The processor configured is to send, by a first device, a request for a whitespace map, the whitespace map including a list of whitespace frequency channels available for use within a particular geographical area. The processor is further configured to receive the whitespace map by the first device, and determine, by the first device, a control channel map from the whitespace map using a probability algorithm. The control channel map is a subset of the white space map and includes a list of control channel frequencies.