Method and system for the control of discontinuous reception in a wireless network

A user equipment for discontinuous reception (DRX) operations, comprising:

• a communications subsystem adapted to communicate with a network element and to further receive a medium access control (MAC) control element from the network element;
• and
• a processor configured to
• determine that the MAC control element is received,
• determine whether the MAC control element includes a Hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) process identifier, and
• stop a retransmission timer or preventing the retransmission timer from starting based on the determining whether the MAC control element includes the HARQ process identifier.

An apparatus comprising instructions embodied on a tangible, non-transitory computer-readable medium, the instructions operable when executed to cause a computing system to perform operations comprising:

• receiving, at a user equipment (UE) and from a network element, a medium access control (MAC) control element;
• determining whether the MAC control element includes a Hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) process identifier;
• and
• stopping a retransmission timer or preventing the retransmission timer from starting based on the determining whether the MAC control element includes the HARQ process identifier.