A wireless communication device is configured to perform resource access in device-to-device (D2D) communication. A user equipment (UE) is provided with processing hardware comprising application processing circuitry and baseband processing circuitry. The application processing circuitry assigns a per-packet priority to data packets in the application layer. The baseband processing circuitry maps the per-packet priority to a transmission priority in the physical layer and prioritizes access to a wireless resource pool depending upon the transmission priority. A UE having the application processing circuitry and baseband processing circuitry is also provided. A computer program product is also provided. An evolved Node B (eNodeB) allocates a resource quota to a UE based upon priority information from the UE corresponding to a D2D communication to be transmitted by the UE. Other embodiments may be described and claimed.