A method for communicating beacon transmissions from a wireless access point (WAP) to a client transceiver in a wireless local area network (WLAN) system (500) includes obtaining a reference timing for the wireless access point (WAP) (502). The sector configuration and the sector timing in the WAP is then determined (503). A virtual target beacon transmission time (TBTT) for the sector of interest serviced by the WAP is then calculated (506), as is a channel number of the sector of interest. Finally, the method provides for listening (507) for a sector beacon signal from the sector of interest at the virtual TBTT and the calculated channel number.