Systems and methods related to “on/off” determinations regarding the performance of physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) monitoring during connected mode discontinuous reception (CDRX) on duration windows are disclosed herein. In some cases, a radio access network (RAN) predicts whether a downlink (DL) packet for a UE will arrive at a buffer of the RAN prior to an end of a CDRX on duration window of the UE, and sends a downlink control information (DCI) with a cyclic redundancy check (CRC) scrambled by a power-saving radio network temporary identifier (PS-RNTI) (DCP) for the CDRX on duration window indicating whether or not the UE should perform PDCCH monitoring during the CDRX on duration window based on the prediction. In some cases, a UE determines a current state of DL traffic and adaptively uses DCP monitoring based on the current state of the traffic. Aggregation level adaptation by the RAN is also discussed.