An apparatus and method for initiating discontinuous reception (DRX) operation in a user equipment (UE) are disclosed herein. Applications running on the UE are monitored by the UE to identify one or more inactivity trigger events associated with the application(s). The UE includes an application-radio cross layer to process the application information, including the inactivity trigger event, for use by a radio layer. The radio layer of the UE determines initiation of the DRX operation in accordance with the application information, including the inactivity trigger event, provided by the application-radio cross layer and device characteristics information.