An embodiment of the invention is a technique for power saving in mobile communication. At least one of a base station (BS) and a mobile station (MS) is initialized for power saving using a downlink (DL) status and an uplink (UL) status associated with the BS and the MS, respectively, during communication between the BS and the MS. A first PSC mode is entered when both the DL and UL statuses indicate a silence period. A second PSC mode is entered when at least one of the DL and UL statuses indicates a talk period.