A method and base station for outerloop adjustment for link adaptation of a physical downlink control channel, PDCCH, in a communication network to determine a control channel element, CCE, aggregation level of a downlink assignment downlink control information, DCI, and a CCE aggregation level of an uplink grant DCI is provided. A downlink data packet feedback corresponding to the downlink assignment is received. A status of the downlink data packet feedback is determined. An uplink data packet corresponding to the uplink grant is received and a status thereof is determined. An outerloop downlink adjustment and outerloop uplink adjustment are updated based on at least one of the status of the downlink data packet feedback corresponding to the downlink assignment and status of the uplink data packet corresponding to the uplink grant. An outerloop uplink adjustment is determined as a sum of the outerloop downlink adjustment and an offset adjustment.