Design of robust radio link monitoring framework for unlicensed spectrum is disclosed. The network may configured two different types of radio link monitoring (RLM) reference signal (RS) resources: default resources, which are transmitted throughout a connection, and additional resources, which may be transmitted only when there has been failure of transmission or reception of the default resources. Various criteria may be used by the network to trigger scheduling transmission of the additional RLM-RS. Moreover, different criteria may prompt a user equipment (UE) to begin monitoring the additional RLM-RS resources, including autonomous and network-initiated criteria.