US Patent 9949275 Physical uplink control management in LTE/LTE-A systems with unlicensed spectrum

Uplink control channel management is disclosed for LTE/LTE-A communication systems with unlicensed spectrum in which two or more physical resource blocks (PRBs) are allocated for uplink control channel transmission. The uplink control information (UCI) payload may be determined based on clear channel assessment (CCA) information associated with carriers scheduled for transmission of the UCI data. With the UCI payload determined, two or more uplink control channel messages may be generated according to at least one control channel format, wherein uplink control channel messages include the UCI payload. These generated uplink control channel messages may then be transmitted over the allocated PRBs.