Apparatus and methods are provided for transitioning wireless devices between a plurality of states having increasing resource intensity from a least resource intensive state to a most resource intensive second state. All power-on wireless devices are ranked. A respective subset of the power-on wireless devices is assigned to each state, the power-on wireless devices of the subsets having rankings which increase with resource intensity of the state. Signalling is generated to the wireless devices to instruct them to implement any change in state. The priorities which are calculated for the purpose of state scheduling are preferably the same as those, or at least based upon the priorities used for packet scheduling.