Patent ID: 8711809

Claim:
A method for an efficient discontinuous reception (‘DRX’) operation during handover in a Long Term Evolution (‘LTE’) system in which a user equipment expects handover to occur from an enhanced Node B (‘eNB’), the method comprising: deciding, at the eNB, whether a handover is to occur; if the eNB decided that no handover is to occur, receiving at the user equipment from the eNB a message indicating that no handover will occur, within a predetermined time period; and maintaining a normal DRX cycle at the user equipment; if the eNB decided that a handover is to occur, performing at the user equipment the steps of: (1) ensuring the user equipment is not in a DRX sleep period during reception of a handover grant; and (2) checking whether the handover grant is received, and if the handover grant is received, performing a handover procedure; and if the handover grant is not received, resuming the normal DRX cycle.