A method and system for device discovery in a wireless network is provided. The device discovery involves directionally transmitting a data unit from a transmitting station over a channel in different directions to emulate omni-directional transmission, receiving the data unit transmissions from different directions at a receiving station, determining the quality of the transmissions received from the different directions, and detecting location information for the transmitting station relative to the receiving station based on the highest quality transmission among the transmissions received from the different directions. Further, if a channel has sufficient bandwidth to satisfy direct link communication between two stations, then during a direct link set-up stage, the two stations conduct a probing message exchange using omni-direction transmission, and upon successful probing, obtain communication link status information and set proper communication configurations for the two stations based on the communication link status information.