Patent ID: 8681724

Claim:
A method comprising: sending to a user equipment a transmission indication indicative of a transmission to be sent by a network element over an interface comprising at least two aggregated component carriers including a primary component carrier and at least one secondary component carrier; if the physical downlink control channel on the primary component carrier is capable of configuring the transmission in the following subframes of the primary component carrier and at least one secondary component carrier, signaling to the user equipment a timing gap message for configuring the user equipment to impose a timing gap between successful decoding of the transmission indication and starting of an inactivity timer on a secondary component carrier, the inactivity timer indicating the minimum waiting time duration for the UE until deactivating reception on the component carrier associated with the inactivity timer; wherein the primary component carrier has a physical downlink control channel associated therewith; wherein the physical downlink control channel is configured to signal allocations for the primary component carrier and the at least one secondary component carrier; and wherein the transmission indication is sent to the user equipment in the physical downlink control channel of the primary component carrier.