Systems and methodologies are described that provide support for signal acquisition in wireless communication systems that utilize half-duplex communication in the presence of asynchronous sectors. Forward link and reverse link superframes can be structured such that a given frame position in a superframe alternates between forward link communication and reverse link communication for a particular half-duplex interlace. More particularly, an odd number of frames can be grouped into respective forward link and reverse link superframes, from which frames can be assigned to a first half-duplex interlace and a second half-duplex interlace in an alternating fashion. By varying the communication link used by a half-duplex interlace at a given frame location, terminals operating on a single half-duplex interlace can detect asynchronously operating sectors irrespective of the transmission timeline of such sectors.