In an aspect of the disclosure, a method, a computer-readable medium, and an apparatus are provided. The apparatus may be a narrowband Internet of thing (NB-IoT) user equipment (UE). Further, the apparatus may be configured to receive NB reference signals (NRS) on a NB channel during a gap between reception events, perform link quality measurements based on the NRS received during an evaluation time interval, the evaluation time interval being shorter than the gap between the reception events, determine whether a link quality is greater than or equal to a first threshold, during the evaluation time interval, based on the link quality measurements, and determine whether to enable an autonomous reception (RX) sleep mode for a remaining duration of the gap between the reception events based at least in part on determining whether the link quality is greater than or equal to the first threshold value.