Improving 3GPP-LTE uplink control signaling by repetition across frequency bands

We propose improvements for the physical uplink control channel (PUCCH) format 2 control signaling in 3GPP-LTE systems. These improvements can be useful for low-cost UE design and optimization planned for the future LTE releases. In the proposed method, instead of repeating a single QPSK symbol across the 12 subcarriers in each OFDM symbol of a resource block as done in the current release of the standard, we pick two QPSK symbols from two independent resource blocks and repeat them across 6 subcarriers each. The proposed method has a performance gain of about 5.5 dB and 1.85 dB over the conventional method with one and two receiving antennas at the base station, respectively. These gains can be achieved without the use of any additional transmission power, time-frequency resources or receiver complexity. The cell-specific QPSK sequences specified in the standard for PUCCH transmission are chosen according to the conventional repetition across the 12 subcarriers, hence we suggest new cell-specific QPSK sequences which minimize the peak-to-average-power ratio (PAPR) of the PUCCH signal with the proposed method.