Systems, apparatus and methods can be implemented for performing random access in carrier aggregation. A user equipment (UE) can transmit a random access preamble to a secondary access device of a second carrier, where the UE is served by both a primary access device and the secondary access device, and the UE is configured to attempt a total number of blind decoding attempts for decoding physical downlink control channel candidates of a UE-specific search space of the second carrier. The UE can perform a first blind decoding of first PDCCH candidates of the common search space of the second carrier, and perform a second blind decoding of second PDCCH candidates of the UE specific search space of the second carrier. A number of blind decoding attempts for the first and second blind decodings is less than or equal to the configured total number of blind decoding attempts.