A wireless communication device comprises a transceiver configured to communicate information with one or more neighbor devices in accordance with a sync mode of a WiFi communication protocol, and a controller. The controller is configured to monitor for reception of at least one of a response frame or a beacon frame sent by any neighbor device, determine whether to schedule transmission of a service frame, and change operation to a background scan mode when the at least one of the response frame or the beacon frame sent by any neighbor device is undetected for a specified time duration and the transmission of a service frame is unscheduled.