An apparatus and method are disclosed for generating a transmission connection identifier (CID) for a transmitter/receiver pair in a wireless network. The CID may be selected from or mapped to a hybrid CID space comprising a first set of orthogonal CIDs and a second set of non-orthogonal (random or pseudo-random) CIDs. When a transmitter device wants to initiate a peer-to-peer connection with a receiver device, the transmitter and receiver devices attempt to obtain a CID to identify their connection within a traffic channel in a shared frequency space. The first and/or second device attempt to select a CID from the first set of orthogonal CIDs. However, if a CID collision is detected, the first and second devices select their CID from the second set of non-orthogonal CIDs. The selected transmission CID may be used during a time slot or interval to facilitate communications between the first and second devices.