METHODS AND APPARATUS FOR SECURELY ADVERTISING IDENTIFICATION AND/OR DISCOVERY INFORMATION

摘要

Methods and apparatus related to a peer to peer wireless communications system (102,104) supporting secure advertisement of identification and/or discovery information (132) e.g., upper layer discovery information, are described. Air interface timing and/or other information received from a third device (112), e.g., a beacon or GPS transmitter is incorporated in the computation of identification/discovery information (207) which is communicated from a first device to a second device. The second device stores some identification/discovery credentials corresponding to the first device (212), which have been communicated out of band from the first device to the second device (130). Upon receipt of a identifier from a first device, the second device determines if the stored information corresponds to the device that transmitted the identifier (218). Various embodiments facilitate secure advertisement of identification and/or discovery information and discovery, e.g., selective discovery by trusted peers.