To manage limited energy resources efficiently, IEEE 802.16e specifies sleep mode operation. Since there can be no communication between the mobile station (MS) and the serving base station (BS) during the unavailability interval, the MS can power down its physical operation components. We propose an improved power saving mechanism (iPSM) which effectively increases the unavailability interval of Type I and Type II power saving classes (PSCs) activated in an MS. After investigating the number of frames in the unavailability interval of each Type II PSC when used with Type I PSC, the iPSM chooses the Type II PSC that yields the maximum number of frames in the unavailability interval. Performance evaluation confirms that the proposed scheme is very effective.