Apparatuses and methods of flow-based processing is wireless systems are described. For example, in one method, a WTRU may determine that one or more data units correspond to a flow of such data units. The WTRU may perform such determination as a function of one or more matching rule(s). Flow-based processing may be enabled in the layer 2/layer 1 chain by per-packet determination using one or more rules, for example by routing through the applicable processing functions and/or using the applicable configuration and/or mapping to the applicable uplink physical layer functions and/or resources. One or more functions such as scheduling request, buffer status reporting, HARQ processing, and/or radio link failure and recovery may be controlled based on the policy associated with the flow corresponding to the data being processed.