Aspects of the present disclosure provide techniques that may be applied in systems to allow for communication over a control channel utilizing a relatively narrow band (e.g., six physical resource blocks) based search space. An exemplary method, performed by a user equipment, generally includes identifying, within a subframe, a first search space to monitor for a downlink control channel that occupies a first number of physical resource blocks (PRBs) that represents a narrowband size and monitoring at least the first search space for the downlink control channel transmitted in the subframe.