Systems and methodologies are described that facilitate detecting and/or identifying peers in a local area peer-to-peer network. Times (e.g., peer discovery intervals) for performance of mutual detection and identification between peers may be synchronized (e.g., based upon a signal broadcast to the peers), Further, within each partitioned peer discovery interval, a wireless terminal may select a portion of time to transmit (e.g., broadcast) short messages that may be employed by peers to detect and/identify the wireless terminal. Moreover, the remainder of the time within the partitioned peer discovery interval may be employed to listen to short messages received from peers.