A downlink transmission method and a corresponding base station and terminal are provided. In some feasible implementations, a base station sends downlink control information to a terminal in a subframe n+k, where the downlink control information includes indication information and a HARQ process identification, the indication information is used to indicate a location of at least one OFDM symbol in data that is sent by the base station to the terminal in a subframe n, the HARQ process identification in the downlink control information is the same as a HARQ process identification in the subframe n, and both n and k are natural numbers; and the base station transmits, in the subframe n+k, at least data that is sent to the terminal and that is on the at least one OFDM symbol that is in the subframe n and that is indicated by the indication information.