Doze mode suspends foreground service

I am writing a data logger app and I need to make an http request every 5 minutes exactly. The user is aware of the battery drain and that's ok for me. I am using a foreground service with the appropriate notification for that and I have a handler thread to witch I post runnable tasks every 5 minutes. It seems that when the phone enter DOZE MODE the thread is suspended and no runnables are executed. Is that normal behaviour or I am missing something? Any help on how to do that will be appreciated.

Service code that starts the thread:

private void startTheForegroundService() {   
      NotificationCompat.Builder builder = new NotificationCompat.Builder(MainService.this);
      builder.setPriority(Notification.PRIORITY_HIGH);
      startForeground(1000, builder.build());

      httpThread = new HttpThread("Ping Thread", Thread.NORM_PRIORITY);
      httpThread.start();
      httpThread.loop();
}

Thread code:

public class HttpThread extends HandlerThread {
   public Handler mHandler;

   public HttpThread(String name, int priority) {
      super(name, priority);
   }

   public synchronized void waitUntilReady() {
      mHandler = new Handler(getLooper(), new Handler.Callback() {
         @Override
         public boolean handleMessage(Message msg) {
            return false;
         }
      });
   }

   public void loop() {
      waitUntilReady();
      mHandler.post(new Runnable(){
      @Override
      public void run() {
         //code for the http request.
       }
     });
   }
}