An approach to reduce the signaling overhead for tracking reference signal (TRS) configuration signaling to idle and inactive user equipments (UEs) operating in a wireless communication system. Conventional signaling approaches require more bits that can be conveyed in the maximum system information block (SIB) message size. One proposed approach optimizes the signaling by removing unnecessary or redundant information, using a single TRS configuration to replace multiple configurations, size reduction in some fields, and the sharing of some fields across different TRS configurations. Another proposed approach uses an SIB message to carry the TRS configurations for a particular beam or subset of beams. These two proposed approaches may be combined to provide further optimization possibilities.