Systems and methodologies are described that facilitate employing a variety of medium access control (MAC) header formats in wireless communications. The MAC header formats can be specialized for a particular type of data included in a protocol data unit (PDU). In addition, the MAC headers can have a variable length to accommodate payloads of varying sizes without incurring unnecessary overhead. Further, mechanisms are provided to enable direct access and delivery of control PDUs to associated protocol layers to ensure better quality of service treatment.