A communication method, a base station, and a terminal, which are applied to the communications field, to resolve a problem in the prior art that the terminal cannot obtain a frequency-time pattern of a discovery time period when an interval between two consecutive discovery time periods is long. The method includes: generating, by a base station, an identifier of a current discovery frame of a current discovery time period; and broadcasting, by the base station, the identifier of the current discovery frame of the current discovery time period, so that a terminal that receives the broadcast sent by the base station acquires, according to the identifier, in the broadcast, of the current discovery frame of the current discovery time period, a frequency-time pattern of the current discovery time period or a frequency-time pattern of a discovery time period that is after the current discovery time period.