Patent ID: 7224970

Claim:
A method of scanning for a beacon from a wireless local area network (WLAN) access point by a wireless station, comprising: performing a scan and shut down procedure, including: waking up a WLAN radio subsystem of the wireless station at a scan start time; receiving a beacon from one of at least two access points operating on the same channel in the vicinity of the wireless station, the beacon including beacon data including an access point identifier; passing the beacon data to a host processor of the wireless station; placing the WLAN radio subsystem into a low power state immediately after receiving and passing; comparing the access point identifier with a desired access point identifier, performed by the host processor; if the access point identifier is the same as the desired access point identifier, continuing with the scan and shut down procedure for receiving a next beacon transmission; and if the access point identifier is not the same as the desired access point identifier, discarding the beacon data and using a timed window scanning procedure for receiving the next beacon transmission.