According to one aspect of the present disclosure, a method is implemented by a particular user equipment (UE) that is part of a group of UEs. The particular UE receives physical layer group signaling sent from a base station over a control channel on a first carrier. The particular UE determines, based on the group signaling, whether data will be transmitted by the base station to a UE in the group during a current DRX cycle over a second carrier that is different from the first carrier. Depending on the outcome of the determining, the particular UE performs one of the following: entering a DRX sleep mode for the rest of the DRX cycle; and starting or restarting a DRX inactivity timer of the particular UE and monitoring the control channel until the DRX inactivity timer expires.