Mechanism to receive control signals transmitted from a base station (210, 510, 910) to the user equipment (220, 520, 920) in a manner that minimizes power consumption on the user equipment (220, 520, 920) while still maintaining some acceptable level of performance is described. The user equipment (220, 520, 920) periodically measures the signal quality of component carriers used by the base station (210, 510, 910) and requests control signaling (anchor) carrier reselection. Either a single component carrier can be chosen if the single carrier has sufficient quality or multiple component carriers can be selected when the quality of the single quality is low. The anchor carrier reselection may also be triggered to manage the system as a whole. For fast moving user equipments (220, 520, 920), anchor carrier hopping pattern can be provided to increase robustness and reduce reselection signaling overhead.