Patent ID: 11903034

Abstract:
Systems for providing coverage enhancement for Msg 3 PUSCH and PUCCH carrying the HARQ-ACK for Msg4 of PRACH initial access are described. The gNB provides a 2-bit aggregation factor for transmission of the Msg3 PUSCH in an RAR UL grant field. The PUSCH frequency resource allocation field is limited to 12 bits so that the RAR has an overall number of bits that is the same as an RAR that does not contain the aggregation factor. A default PUSCH TDRA table includes a field to indicate a repetition level for Msg3 PUSCH transmission. For retransmissions, fields in DCI format 0_0 are repurposed to indicate an aggregation factor. Inter-slot frequency hopping may be configured by higher layers. Different PRACH resources are used to indicate UE coverage status.