Flexible Downlink Control Signal Monitoring in Wireless Communications

A base station comprising:

• radio circuitry configured to enable wireless communications of the base station;
• and
• a processor communicatively coupled to the radio circuitry and configured to interoperate with the radio circuitry to:
• transmit downlink control information (DCI) to a device that communicates according to a first radio access technology (RAT) on a plurality of cells of a carrier aggregation configuration, wherein the DCI instructs the device to switch from operating in a first state (FS) for a first group of active cells of the plurality of cells to operating in a second (SS) for at least one of:
• at least one cell of the first group of active cells when the DCI also includes data scheduling for the serving cell, or
• a first sub-group of cells of the first group of active cells when a bit comprised in the DCI corresponds to a specific group of cells that includes the first sub-group of cells;
• wherein in the FS for a given cell, physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) candidates for the given cell are not monitored by the device, and
• wherein in the SS for the given cell, PDCCH candidates are monitored by the device on physical resources configured by higher layers on a respective active bandwidth part (BWP) for the given cell.

A non-transitory memory element storing instructions executable by a processor to cause a base station to:

• transmit downlink control information (DCI) to a device that communicates according to a first radio access technology (RAT) on a plurality of cells of a carrier aggregation configuration, wherein the DCI instructs the device to switch from operating in a first state (FS) for a first group of active cells of the plurality of cells to operating in a second (SS) for at least one of:
• at least one cell of the first group of active cells when the DCI also includes data scheduling for the serving cell, or
• a first sub-group of cells of the first group of active cells when a bit comprised in the DCI corresponds to a specific group of cells that includes the first sub-group of cells;
• wherein in the FS for a given cell, physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) candidates for the given cell are not monitored by the device, and
• wherein in the SS for the given cell, PDCCH candidates are monitored by the device on physical resources configured by higher layers on a respective active bandwidth part (BWP) for the given cell.

A device comprising:

• radio circuitry configured to enable wireless communications of the device on a plurality of cells of a carrier aggregation configuration;
• and
• a processor communicatively coupled to the radio circuitry and configured to:
• cause the device to operate at any given point in time in a first state (FS) for a first group of active cells of the plurality of cells and in a second state (SS) for a second group of active cells of the plurality of cells, wherein in the FS for a given cell the device does not monitor physical downlink control channel candidates for the given cell, and wherein in the SS for the given cell the device monitors physical downlink control channel candidates on physical resources configured by higher layers on a respective active bandwidth part (BWP) for the given cell, and
• cause the device to switch, in response to downlink control information (DCI) received from a serving cell of the device, from operating in the FS to operating in the SS for at least one of:
• at least one cell of the first group of active cells when the DCI also includes data scheduling for the serving cell, or
• a first sub-group of cells of the first group of active cells when a bit comprised in the DCI corresponds to a specific group of cells that includes the first sub-group of cells.

The device of 22, wherein the special DCI includes a plurality of requests associated with a specific cell of the plurality of cells, each of the plurality of requests intended for a corresponding device of a group of devices;

• wherein the processor is configured to further instruct the device to:
• receive an index via higher-layer signaling;
• and
• identify, using the index, which of the plurality of requests is intended for the device.