Briefly, in accordance with one or more embodiments, a subscriber station in sleep mode is capable of sending and/or receiving traffic during sleep mode without violating the delay requirements of best effort traffic. Moreover, a subscriber station is capable of remaining in sleep and may optionally only be awaken in the event there is data to be transmitted from the base station to the subscriber station and/or from the subscriber station to the base station. By implementing an always sleep and need based wake up arrangement, the power consumption of the subscriber station can be reduced.