Scheduling-Aware Multi-Stage DRX With Dynamic DCP Signaling (SA-MSDDS)

Abstract

In an effort to achieve energy-efficient wireless communications, the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) introduced the Discontinuous Reception (DRX) mechanism, to reduce power consumption in 5G New Radio (NR) user equipment (UE). The framework was further enhanced with Downlink Control Information for Power Saving (DCP), also known as a Wake-Up Signal (WUS), which allows the UE to remain dormant until explicitly notified of pending transmissions. However, several existing DRX-based approaches rely on simplified latency assumptions that are not fully aligned with standardized 5G QoS Identifier (5QI) specifications. As a result, packet loss considerations are often neglected and service-level differentiation is not adequately supported, limiting their applicability in practical multi-service network environments. To address these limitations, this paper proposes a Scheduling-Aware Multi-Stage DRX with Dynamic DCP Signaling (SA-MSDDS) framework that accommodates multiple concurrent services with heterogeneous latency requirements defined by 3GPP standards. The proposed mechanism enables flexible power-saving operations by dynamically adapting DRX behavior according to scheduling priority (SP) and packet delay budget (PDB) while leveraging multiple DCP opportunities for efficient wake-up control. A discrete-time Markov model with constrained optimization is used to determine optimal DRX cycle configurations, while Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) is employed to manage priority based scheduling decisions. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed SA-MSDDS framework significantly improves energy efficiency in realistic multi-service traffic environments, achieving approximately 40% improvement in UE sleep ratio and nearly 50% reduction in power consumption while maintaining tolerable packet loss and satisfying PDB constraints.