Techniques to enable physical downlink control channel communications

An apparatus of a base station, comprising:

• baseband circuitry, including one or more processors, to:
• determine physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) candidates to assign to a user equipment (UE) based on one or more aggregation levels, each PDCCH candidate in a highest aggregation level of the one or more aggregation levels assigned by a random distribution over a whole control channel element (CCE) domain, and each PDCCH candidate in one or more non-highest aggregation levels of the one or more aggregation levels assigned a random distribution over one or more CCEs utilized by PDCCH candidates of the highest aggregation level;
• select at least one of the PDCCH candidates to utilize to send downlink control information (DCI) to the UE;
• and
• cause transmission of the DCI to the UE via the PDCCH candidates selected;
• and
• a memory to store data including the one or more aggregation levels.

An apparatus of a user equipment, comprising:

• baseband circuitry, including one or more processors, to:
• determine physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) candidates to monitor based on one or more aggregation levels, each PDCCH candidate in a highest aggregation level of the one or more aggregation levels assigned by a random distribution over a whole control channel element (CCE) domain, and each PDCCH candidate in one or more non-highest aggregation levels of the one or more aggregation levels assigned a random distribution over one or more CCEs utilized by PDCCH candidates of the highest aggregation level;
• monitor the PDCCH candidates to receive downlink control information (DCI) from a base station;
• and
• receive, from the base station, the DCI via at least one of the PDCCH candidates;
• and
• memory to store data including the one or more aggregation levels.

A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium, comprising a plurality of instructions, that when executed, enable processing circuitry of a base station to:

• determine physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) candidates to assign to a user equipment (UE) based on one or more aggregation levels, each PDCCH candidate in a highest aggregation level of the one or more aggregation levels assigned by a random distribution over a whole control channel element (CCE) domain, and each PDCCH candidate in one or more non-highest aggregation levels of the one or more aggregation levels assigned a random distribution over one or more CCEs utilized by PDCCH candidates of the highest aggregation level;
• select at least one of the PDCCH candidates to utilize to send downlink control information (DCI) to the UE;
• and
• cause transmission of the DCI to the UE via the PDCCH candidates selected.

A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium, comprising a plurality of instructions, that when executed, enable processing circuitry of user equipment (UE) to:

• determine physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) candidates to monitor based on one or more aggregation levels, each PDCCH candidate in a highest aggregation level of the one or more aggregation levels assigned by a random distribution over a whole control channel element (CCE) domain, and each PDCCH candidate in one or more non-highest aggregation levels of the one or more aggregation levels assigned a random distribution over one or more CCEs utilized by PDCCH candidates of the highest aggregation level;
• monitor the PDCCH candidates to receive downlink control information (DCI) from a base station;
• and
• receive, from the base station, the DCI via at least one of the PDCCH candidates.