A method of narrowband physical downlink control channel (NPDCCH) monitoring with early decoding and reduced monitoring is proposed. Instead of blind decoding the NPDCCH at the end of each decoding instance, the UE tries to decode the NPDCCH at early decoding instances as well. The early decoding instances are determined based on the SNR of a received radio signal. Once NPDCCH is successfully decoded, UE stops the RF module. Furthermore, the UE skips some subframes for NPDCCH monitoring within each blind decoding interval, and turns on the RF only for synchronization and channel estimation purpose outside an NPDCCH monitoring length. The NPDCCH monitoring length is also determined based on the SNR of the received radio signal. By applying early decoding and reduced monitoring, UE power consumption can be reduced.