Base station operations for reduced capability user equipment

A baseband processor configured to perform operations comprising:

• broadcasting a system information block (SIB) identifying a plurality of random access channel (RACH) sub-bands of an uplink (UL) bandwidth and which of the plurality of RACH sub-bands includes physical random access channel (PRACH) resources;
• receiving, from a user equipment (UE), a preamble from one of the plurality of RACH sub-bands selected by the UE;
• and
• transmitting a random access response (RAR) of message 2 (Msg2) to the UE, wherein a number of message 3 (Msg3) repetitions is indicated by a predetermined number of bits of an UL grant in the RAR configured to indicate one of a set of predetermined values for the number of msg3 repetitions and a number of Msg2 repetitions is equal to a sum of (1) a number of symbols corresponding to the PRACH format of the corresponding RACH sub-band and (2) a constant configured by the SIB.