A system and a method are disclosed for receiving downlink control information over a wireless downlink control channel of a wireless network. A transceiver of a device is coupled to a wireless network, and a processing device of the device is coupled to the transceiver and is configured to control the transceiver to transmit to the wireless network a monitoring capability of the device in which the monitoring capability is indicated from multiple capability sets. Each capability set includes at least one (X,Y) pattern in which X is a minimum time separation of symbols of two spans of a time slot and Y is a maximum number of consecutive symbols for each span of the time slot. The processing device is further configured to control the transceiver to receive downlink control information in a capability set selected by the wireless network to send downlink control information to the device.