It should be noted that the discovery resource elements described in the related embodiments may represent physical resources or virtual resources. Representing the physical resources means that the resource blocks are physical resource blocks (PRB); representing the virtual resources means that the discovery resource elements need to be mapped to the physical resources. Moreover, the number of virtual resource elements may be different from that of physical discovery resource elements in a period, for example, the number of the physical discovery resource elements may be a multiple of the number of the virtual resource elements, that is, one virtual discovery resource element will correspond to a plurality of physical discovery resource elements.

For the UE which needs to send the device discovery signals, the discovery resource elements for sending the device discovery signals can be determined in the discovery resource period, and the device discovery signals can be sent on the determined resource discovery elements.

Further, determining at most one discovery resource element for sending the device discovery signals in the discovery resource period may include the UE sends the device discovery signals only once in each discovery resource period; or the UE sends the device discovery signals every a specific period, which is T times the discovery resource period, herein T is an integer greater than 1.

Embodiment 3