Methods, systems, and devices for wireless communications are described. A user equipment (UE) may receive a downlink message that includes a control channel monitoring periodicity and control channel offset for a radio frame. A UE may identify a set of slots within a radio frame to monitor for downlink control information (DCI) based on the received downlink message. The UE may identify a control channel candidate within a search space of each slot of the set of slots, and may identify the control channel candidate of a first slot based on calculations that include a current slot and a previous slot. There may be one or more slots that occur between the previous slot and the current slot. The UE may receive DCI that is user-specific based on the identified control channel candidate.