Aspects of the present disclosure provide methods, devices and systems that limit a number of DCI payload sizes in order to limit the complexity of processing needed to perform blind decoding of the DCI payload. Various embodiments are provided that limit the number of DCI payload sizes. A base station determines the payload sizes to be used for a given time slot and once generated, transmits the DCI to one or more UEs. The UE is responsible for receiving the DCI and performing blind decoding to decode the information intended for the UE. In some embodiments, limiting the number of payload sizes may result in some DCI content that is smaller than the allotted DCI payload size being padded with zero bits to fill the allotted DCI payload size.