FIG. 4 is a schematic diagram of combining a WUS and a DRX mechanism. As shown in FIG. 4, for a terminal device supporting the WUS, there is a “WUS occasion” (where the WUS occasion may be understood as a subframe or a slot in which the WUS is located) existing before a start location of “on duration” of each DRX cycle and corresponding to the terminal device. A network device may send the WUS for the terminal device in a form of discontinuous transmission (DTX) on the “WUS occasion”. To be specific, the network device determines, based on a requirement for data scheduling, whether to send the WUS on the “WUS occasion”, and the terminal device needs to monitor the WUS on the “WUS occasion” to determine whether the network device sends the WUS. When the terminal device “sleeps”, the terminal device may monitor and demodulate the WUS in a state with extremely low power consumption (where for example some modem functions are enabled or only a simple receive circuit is used). As shown in FIG. 4, when the terminal device detects no WUS on the “WUS occasion” or a detected WUS indicates that there is no data scheduling for the terminal device in the corresponding “on duration” time period, the terminal device may directly enter a sleep state, and does not need to monitor a PDCCH in the “on duration” time period. However, if the terminal device detects the WUS on the “WUS occasion” or the detected WUS indicates that there is data scheduling for the terminal device in the corresponding “on duration” time period, the terminal device “wakes up” from the sleep state. That is, in this case, the terminal device may start a timer based on the foregoing DRX mechanism procedure to monitor the PDCCH. In this case, the terminal device needs sufficient time to enable all modem functions, so that the terminal device can monitor the PDCCH and receive a data channel in the DRX cycle. Therefore, there is a time interval between the “WUS occasion” and the start time location of the “on duration”, and the time interval may be referred to as a “WUS offset”, or may be referred to as a gap value. The time interval is usually represented by using a parameter T. The parameter may be configured by using higher layer signaling (where a range of a value of the parameter is several milliseconds to hundreds of milliseconds). The network device may determine the value of the parameter based on a capability reported by the terminal device.