In one embodiment, the determining a resource region carrying control information comprises: receiving, from the terminal device, mapping information about at least one of: subframes to which the control information is mapped, cells to which the control information is mapped, control channel elements or resource elements of subframes to which the control information is mapped, control channel elements or resource elements of cells to which the control information is mapped, an encoding scheme used in the mapping, a numerology of the resource region, and a search space of the resource region; and determining the resource region based on the mapping information.

In one embodiment, the detecting the control information comprises: decoding the control information based on a self-contained encoding scheme or a combined encoding scheme.

In a third aspect, an apparatus implemented at a network device is provided. The apparatus includes a mapping unit and a transmitting unit. The mapping unit is configured to map control information to a resource region, the control information being associated with data to be transmitted at a first subframe of a first cell, and the resource region crossing a plurality of subframes and/or a plurality of cells. The transmitting unit is configured to transmit the control information on the resource region to a terminal device.