Embodiments of the present disclosure provide a data transmission method and apparatus. The method includes sending, by a base station to UE, a downlink control channel used to schedule downlink data. The method further includes indicating, by the base station, a first time-frequency resource domain and a second time-frequency resource domain using the downlink control channel. A downlink data channel is sent on a time-frequency resource that is in the first time-frequency resource domain and that does not belong to the second time-frequency resource domain.