Certain aspects of the present disclosure relate to techniques for user-specific search space design for multi-carrier operation in Long Term Evolution Advanced (LTE-A) systems. The user-specific search space can be designed for searching Physical Downlink Control Channels (PDCCHs) transmitted on one component carrier (CC) that schedules Physical Downlink Shared Channel/Physical Uplink Shared Channel (PDSCH/PUSCH) transmissions on two or more different CCs. In one aspect, multiple independent user-specific search spaces can be designed. In another aspect, one user-specific search space can be randomly derived and then expanded to accommodate search for multiple CCs. In yet another aspect, the search space design can retain randomness in starting search element indices of multiple PDSCH/PUSCH CCs, while overlapping of search spaces for multiple PDSCH/PUSCH CCs can be avoided.