Optionally, one search space includes a plurality of candidate control channels, and candidate control channels in one search space correspond to a same aggregation level. An aggregation level corresponding to a search space may also be referred to as an aggregation level of a candidate control channel in the search space, and an aggregation level of a candidate control channel may be a quantity of control channel elements (CCE for short) corresponding to resources of the candidate control channel. For example, a candidate control channel whose aggregation level is 2 includes two CCEs. The aggregation level may be any one of 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, and 32.
It should be noted that a control channel (or a candidate control channel) described in this application may include a physical downlink control channel (PDCCH for short).