An approach is provided for scheduling resources for device-to-device communications. A resource of a network is granted to a group designated for device-to-device communications. The group then determines how the resource allocation is utilized to support the communication session and allocates the resource among the user equipment within the group independently of the base station. Further, a user equipment pair in the group determines transmit/receive (Tx/Rx) timeslot configuration to allow TDD mode operations, and further configure the modulation and coding for the device-to-device connection, and error control scheme for the pair via control signaling independently from the group.