Techniques for transmission of a physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) or enhanced PDCCH (EPDCCH) within a partial subframe of a license assisted access (LAA) burst are discussed. One example apparatus comprises a processor configured to generate a LAA burst; generate one or more downlink control channel messages that comprise at least one of PDCCH messages or EPDCCH messages; generate a physical layer encoding of the LAA burst comprising a first partial subframe, wherein the first partial subframe comprises a physical layer encoding of the one or more downlink control channel messages; and output the first partial subframe comprising the physical layer encoding of the one or more control channel messages to transmitter circuitry for subsequent transmission via an unlicensed carrier.