Wireless devices, e.g., in a cognitive radio network, discover and use locally available usable spectrum for communication. Beacon signaling facilitates available spectrum discovery, spectrum usage coordination, and device identification. A wireless terminal, which may have entered a new area and powered up, monitors to detect for the presence of beacon signals in a communications band. When the wireless terminal fails to detect a beacon, the wireless terminal assumes that the spectrum is available and transmits its user beacon signal thereby providing notification of its presence in the area to other wireless terminals. The wireless terminal maintains a coordinated timing relationship between its beacon transmit interval and beacon detect interval, which are performed on an ongoing basis. The combination of beacon TX interval and beacon monitoring interval represents a small fraction of total time, allowing for power conservation. The coordinated timing relationship, known to peers, facilitates efficient peer-peer communications session establishment.