Hardware-based beacon processing

A battery-powered Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) communication device comprising:

• an activity sensor operable to identify a packet available to be received at the WLAN communication device;
• a PHY module to be awakened to begin receiving the packet, the PHY module operable to decode a full MAC address from a media access control portion of a header of the packet;
• a MAC address parser coupled to the PHY module to receive the MAC address and to determine whether the packet is to be received at the WLAN communication device by comparing the full MAC address to a MAC address of the WLAN communication device, the MAC address parser operable to be awakened for performing the comparing and to be shutdown after the comparing, wherein packets to be received include beacon packets;
• and
• a hardware centric Medium Access Controller (MAC) separate from the MAC address parser and comprising a beacon processor capable of being awakened from a shutdown state to process a beacon packet, wherein
• the PHY module, the MAC address parser, and the beacon processor module are operable to be awakened and shutdown independently of each other and of a microprocessor.