Determination of number of physical uplink control channel repetitions for machine type communications

1. An apparatus of a machine-type communication (MTC) user equipment (UE) comprising baseband processing circuitry to:

transmit a physical uplink control channel (PUCCH) carrying hybrid automatic repeat request acknowledgement (HARQ-ACK) feedback in response to a message 4 (msg4) of a random access procedure received from a base station; and

receive, after msg4 and prior to transmitting the HARQ-ACK feedback on the PUCCH, a radio resource control (RRC) message from the base station indicating a number of repetitions of the PUCCH transmissions to be used over multiple uplink subframes in response to the msg4 and after a RRC connection is established with the base station via the random access procedure, wherein the number of repetitions of the PUCCH transmissions is based on a mapping between a physical random access channel (PRACH) coverage enhancement level and one repetition number from a set of multiple different repetition numbers.

2. The apparatus as claimed in claim 1 , wherein the msg4 is a physical downlink shared channel (PDSCH) transmission.

3. The apparatus as claimed in claim 1 , wherein a limited number of bits is used to indicate the number of PUCCH repetitions from a set of possible values.

4. The apparatus as claimed in claim 1 , wherein the PUCCH transmissions carry scheduling request (SR) information.

5. The apparatus as claimed in claim 4 , wherein the RRC message is received via dedicated RRC signaling.

6. The apparatus as claimed in claim 1 , wherein a number of repetitions of PUCCH to carry HARQ-ACK feedback in response to a PDSCH transmission is identical to the number of repetitions of PUCCH to carry HARQ-ACK feedback in response to Message 4 until a valid RRC configuration with a new PUCCH repetition number is received from the base station.

7. The apparatus as claimed in claim 1 , wherein each coverage enhancement level from a set of coverage enhancement levels is mapped to a different repetition number.

8. An apparatus of a base station comprising baseband processing circuitry to:

receive a physical uplink control channel (PUCCH) carrying hybrid automatic repeat request acknowledgement (HARQ-ACK) feedback from a machine-type communication (MTC) user equipment (UE) in response to a message 4 (msg4) of a random access procedure; and

transmit, after msg4 and prior to receiving the HARQ-ACK feedback on the PUCCH, a radio resource control (RRC) message indicating a number of repetitions of the PUCCH transmissions to be used by the UE over multiple uplink subframes in response to the msg4 and after a RRC connection is established via the random access procedure, wherein the number of repetitions of the PUCCH transmissions is based on a mapping between a physical random access channel (PRACH) coverage enhancement level and one repetition number from a set of multiple different repetition numbers.

9. The apparatus as claimed in claim 8 , wherein the message 4 is a physical downlink shared channel (PDSCH) transmission.

10. The apparatus as claimed in claim 8 , wherein a limited number of bits is to indicate the number of PUCCH repetitions from a set of possible values.

11. The apparatus as claimed in claim 8 , wherein PUCCH transmissions carry scheduling request (SR) information.

12. The apparatus as claimed in claim 11 , wherein the RRC message is transmitted via dedicated RRC signaling.

13. The apparatus as claimed in claim 8 , wherein a number of repetitions of PUCCH to carry HARQ-ACK feedback in response to a PDSCH transmission is identical to the number of repetitions of PUCCH to carry HARQ-ACK feedback in response to Message 4 until a valid RRC configuration with a new PUCCH repetition number is provided to the UE by the base station.

14. One or more non-transitory computer-readable media having instructions stored thereon that, if executed by a user equipment (UE), result in:

transmitting a physical uplink control channel (PUCCH) carrying hybrid automatic repeat request acknowledgement (HARQ-ACK) feedback in response to a message 4 (msg4) of a random access procedure received from a base station; and

receiving, after msg4 and prior to transmitting the HARQ-ACK feedback on the PUCCH, a radio resource control (RRC) message from the baser station indicating a number of repetitions of the PUCCH transmissions to be used over multiple uplink subframes in response to the msg4 and after a RRC connection is established via the random access procedure, wherein the number of repetitions of the PUCCH transmissions is based on a mapping between a physical random access channel (PRACH) coverage enhancement level and one repetition number from a set of multiple different repetition numbers.

15. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media as claimed in claim 14 , wherein the msg4 is a physical downlink shared channel (PDSCH) transmission.

16. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media as claimed in claim 14 , wherein a limited number of bits is used to indicate the number of PUCCH repetitions from a set of possible values.

17. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media as claimed in claim 14 , wherein the PUCCH transmissions carry scheduling request (SR) information.

18. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media as claimed in claim 14 , wherein a number of repetitions of PUCCH to carry HARQ-ACK feedback in response to a PDSCH transmission is identical to the number of repetitions of PUCCH to carry HARQ-ACK feedback in response to Message 4 until a valid RRC configuration with a new PUCCH repetition number is received from the base station.