Methods and apparatus are provided for control overhead reduction. The UE configures one or more short transmission time interval regions over a normal TTI region shared by the UE and one or more other, each UE includes a self-contained control information sPDCCH occupying a control information region. The UE detects a cover signal, which indicates one or more resource elements in the sPDCCH control-information region that can be used for data transmission. The UE obtains data transmission from the REs in the SPDCCH control information region based on the detected cover signal. In one embodiment, the cover signal is a dedicated signal. In another embodiment, the cover signal is a common signal. In yet another embodiment, the cover signal is encoded in a downlink control information (DCI) intended for the UE. In one embodiment, the cover signal indicates one or more CCE REs to be excluded for data transmission.