Transmission of nominal repetitions of data over an unlicensed spectrum

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

• transmitting data over an unlicensed spectrum to a base station in a Time Division Duplexing (TDD) New Radio (NR) communication system, wherein the unlicensed spectrum is used for both uplink (UL) and downlink (DL) transmissions;
• determining, based at least in part on an UL transmission configuration received from the base station, a symbol to be an orphan symbol in a physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH) repetition Type B transmission;
• determining a filler symbol to replace the determined orphan symbol in the PUSCH repetition Type B transmission;
• and
• generating the PUSCH repetition Type B transmission including the filler symbol.

A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing instructions that, when executed by a processor of a user equipment (UE), cause the processor to perform operations, the operations comprising:

• receiving, by the UE and from a base station, a downlink message including an uplink (UL) transmission configuration to transmit UL one or more nominal repetitions from the UE;
• transmitting, by the UE over an unlicensed spectrum, data to the base station, wherein the unlicensed spectrum is used for both UL and downlink (DL) transmissions;
• determining, based at least in part on the UL transmission configuration received from the base station, a symbol to be an orphan symbol of an actual repetition, wherein the actual repetition is among multiple actual repetitions that form the one or more nominal repetitions configured by the UL transmission configuration;
• determining a filler symbol to replace the determined orphan symbol in the actual repetition;
• and
• transmitting, over the unlicensed spectrum and to the base station, the actual repetition including the filler symbol in replacement of the orphan symbol.