An apparatus of user equipment, UE,, the apparatus comprising: physical layer, PHY, circuitry, wherein the PHY circuitry includes a radio frequency, RF, transceiver comprising: a first receive path configured to receive RF signals from an enhanced node B, eNB, of a cellular network and down-convert the received RF signals using a local oscillator, LO, receive frequency; and a second receive path configured to down-convert received RF signals from the eNB and to operate simultaneously with the first receive path; and processing circuitry configured to: determine whether a configured transmission mode of the UE supports receiving data using a single receive channel and includes receive antenna diversity, and a single receive channel is scheduled; determine a channel condition using at least one channel quality metric; determine a physical downlink control channel, PDCCH, decoding mode based on the channel conditions, wherein the processing circuitry is configured to determine that an early PDCCH decoding mode is available if the channel quality metric satisfies a threshold, wherein the early PDCCH decoding mode is a PDCCH decoding mode that allows the UE to decode a PDCCH using only one cell-specific reference symbol belonging to a first orthogonal frequency division multiplex, OFDM, symbol of a subframe; and disable one of the first and second receive paths (305, 325) during a portion of the subframe transmitted during a downlink, DL, communication if the configured transmission mode of the UE supports receiving data using a single receive channel and includes receive antenna diversity, and a single receive channel is scheduled, and the early PDCCH decoding mode is available. physical layer, PHY, circuitry, wherein the PHY circuitry includes a radio frequency, RF, transceiver comprising: a first receive path configured to receive RF signals from an enhanced node B, eNB, of a cellular network and down-convert the received RF signals using a local oscillator, LO, receive frequency; and a second receive path configured to down-convert received RF signals from the eNB and to operate simultaneously with the first receive path; and a first receive path configured to receive RF signals from an enhanced node B, eNB, of a cellular network and down-convert the received RF signals using a local oscillator, LO, receive frequency; and a second receive path configured to down-convert received RF signals from the eNB and to operate simultaneously with the first receive path; and processing circuitry configured to: determine whether a configured transmission mode of the UE supports receiving data using a single receive channel and includes receive antenna diversity, and a single receive channel is scheduled; determine a channel condition using at least one channel quality metric; determine a physical downlink control channel, PDCCH, decoding mode based on the channel conditions, wherein the processing circuitry is configured to determine that an early PDCCH decoding mode is available if the channel quality metric satisfies a threshold, wherein the early PDCCH decoding mode is a PDCCH decoding mode that allows the UE to decode a PDCCH using only one cell-specific reference symbol belonging to a first orthogonal frequency division multiplex, OFDM, symbol of a subframe; and disable one of the first and second receive paths (305, 325) during a portion of the subframe transmitted during a downlink, DL, communication if the configured transmission mode of the UE supports receiving data using a single receive channel and includes receive antenna diversity, and a single receive channel is scheduled, and the early PDCCH decoding mode is available. determine whether a configured transmission mode of the UE supports receiving data using a single receive channel and includes receive antenna diversity, and a single receive channel is scheduled; determine a channel condition using at least one channel quality metric; determine a physical downlink control channel, PDCCH, decoding mode based on the channel conditions, wherein the processing circuitry is configured to determine that an early PDCCH decoding mode is available if the channel quality metric satisfies a threshold, wherein the early PDCCH decoding mode is a PDCCH decoding mode that allows the UE to decode a PDCCH using only one cell-specific reference symbol belonging to a first orthogonal frequency division multiplex, OFDM, symbol of a subframe; and disable one of the first and second receive paths (305, 325) during a portion of the subframe transmitted during a downlink, DL, communication if the configured transmission mode of the UE supports receiving data using a single receive channel and includes receive antenna diversity, and a single receive channel is scheduled, and the early PDCCH decoding mode is available.