Methods and apparatuses are provided for wireless communication. Control symbols are mapped to a plurality of resource element groups (REGs), which are not assigned to a physical channel format indication channel (PCFICH) or a Physical hybrid automatic repeat request indicator channel (PHICH). The REGs are allocated in a time first manner. The mapped control symbols are transmitted on a packet dedicated control channel (PDCCH). Each of the REGs in a first orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) symbol of a first slot in a subframe comprises two resource elements (REs) for transmission of a cell-specific reference signal and four REs for transmission of a control signal.