SCELL radio link monitoring and radio link failure handling

A user equipment (UE), comprising:

• a radio frequency (RF) transceiver that exchanges radio signals with a base station in wireless network;
• a radio resource control (RRC) connection management module that establishes an RRC connection with the base station, where the RRC connection is established over multiple component carriers (CCs);
• a radio link monitoring module that performs radio link monitoring over a primary serving cell (PCELL) belonging to a first CC group of one or more CCs and over a selected reference secondary serving cell (SCELL), wherein the reference SCELL belongs to a second CC group of one or more CCs;
• and
• an SCELL configuration module that applies an action when reference SCELL performance is below a pre-defined criteria, wherein the action is applied over the reference SCELL or all CCs in the second CC group.

A method, comprising:

• establishing a radio resource control (RRC) connection with a user equipment (UE), where the RRC connection is established over multiple component carriers (CCs);
• configuring one or more CCs as a CC group for the UE, wherein the group includes one secondary serving cell (SCELL) as a reference cell;
• receiving a notification from the UE, wherein the notification contains at least one of a detected radio link failure of the reference SCELL, a deactivation of the reference SCELL, availability of problem event information gathered for the reference SCELL, and the problem event information gathered for the reference SCELL;
• and
• applying an action based on the received notification, wherein the action is applied over the reference SCELL and/or all CCs in the group.