Aspects of the present disclosure provide methods and apparatus for transmitting an uplink reference signal, receiving a keep alive (KA) command based, at least in part, on the uplink reference signal, and taking one or more actions to perform a handover to a non-serving base station (BS) in accordance with the KA command. Additionally, aspects provide methods and apparatus for receiving an uplink reference signal from a user equipment (UE), measuring the uplink reference signal, and transmitting a KA command to the UE based, at least in part, on the measured uplink reference signal. The KA command may be scrambled by an identifier associated with the UE. Additionally or alternatively, a cyclic prefix (CP) of the uplink reference signal may be longer than a CP of another type of reference signal.