Patent ID: 8570924

Claim:
A method in a communication system comprising a plurality of interconnected communication units, including one or more radio base stations and one or more user equipments, the method comprising: introducing a set of rules commonly known to the radio base stations and user equipments in order to independently initiate or perform in one of said communication units a state transition to or from a reduced transmission activity mode when a predefined criterion has been fulfilled, wherein the predefined criterion relates to activity or inactivity of the one of said communication units; and applying the set of rules by the one of said communication units, wherein applying comprises: maintaining a plurality of timers for uplink and downlink transmission directions; storing timer expiration values; indicating that a timer has expired; restarting the timer of the one of said communication units if transmission activity has been detected to or from the one of said communication units; and detecting, by the one of said communication units, without signaling between the other of said communication units, that the predefined criterion has been fulfilled; and independently initiating, by the one of said communication units, the state transition.