Random access response enhancement for user equipments with reduced capabilities

A method of wireless communication for a user equipment (UE), comprising:

• transmitting a first message or a third message of a random access procedure to a serving base station, the first message or the third message including a request for timeline relaxation for transmission of an acknowledgment message in the random access procedure;
• receiving a second message or a fourth message of the random access procedure from the serving base station, the second message or the fourth message indicating a timing offset corresponding to the timeline relaxation, wherein the timing offset is indicated as a number of slots using one or more bits of a downlink control information (DCI) format and a plurality of bits allocated to a physical downlink shared channel (PDSCH) to hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) feedback (FB) timing indicator in the DCI format;
• and
• transmitting the acknowledgement message on a physical uplink control channel (PUCCH) or a physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH) in response to the second message or fourth message of the random access procedure based on the timing offset.

An apparatus for wireless communication, comprising:

• at least one processor;
• a transceiver communicatively coupled to the at least one processor;
• and
• a memory communicatively coupled to the at least one processor,
• wherein the at least one processor is configured to:
• transmit a message to a serving base station, the message including a request for timeline relaxation for transmission of a subsequent message, the message and the subsequent message being associated with a random access procedure;
• receive a response message from the serving base station, the response message being associated with the random access procedure and indicating one or more timing offsets corresponding to the timeline relaxation, wherein the one or more timing offsets includes at least one slot offset based on at least one lookup table (LUT);
• and
• transmit the subsequent message to the serving base station based on the one or more timing offsets indicated by the serving base station, wherein the subsequent message acknowledges the response message.