A method of increasing the waiting time of a mobile terminal by reducing power consumption for a cell search in a discontinuous reception mode. In an embodiment of the invention, the strengths of signals from neighbor cells are measured and compared with a first threshold. Then a cell search is performed on only neighbor cells having signal strengths higher than the first threshold. In a second embodiment of the invention, a cell search is not performed if the signal strength of an active set is higher than a second threshold in a discontinuous reception mode. In a third embodiment of the invention, an offline cell search is performed in a discontinuous reception mode in the last step of three conventional cell search steps.