Hardware-based beacon processing

A battery-powered WLAN communication device has an activity sensor operable to identify an available packet. A PHY module is awakened to begin receiving the packet. The PHY module decodes a full MAC address from a MAC portion of a header of the packet. A MAC address parser receives the MAC address and determines whether the packet is to be received by comparing the full MAC address to a MAC address of the WLAN communication device. The MAC address parser is awakened to perform the comparing and shutdown after. Packets to be received include beacon packets. A hardware centric MAC separate from the MAC address parser has a beacon processor capable of being awakened from a shutdown state to process a beacon packet. 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.