Patent ID: 8401542

Claim:
A method of monitoring a physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) in a wireless communication system, the method comprising: monitoring a set of PDCCH candidates for a search space in a subframe that comprises a slot that comprises a plurality of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) symbols in a time domain and a plurality of subcarriers in a frequency domain, wherein: the subframe further comprises a control region for transmitting control information, the control region comprising a set of control channel elements (CCEs); the search space comprises a contiguous set of CCEs classified into a common search space and a UE-specific search space; the common search space is monitored by all user equipments (UEs) in a cell and the UE-specific search space is monitored by at least one UE in the cell; locations for the PDCCH candidates for the search space are determined based on a CCE aggregation level; and a number of CCE aggregation levels for the common search space is smaller than a number of CCE aggregation levels for the UE-specific search space.