Aspects of the present disclosure provide a scheduling entity in communication with a set of scheduled entities within a wireless communication network. The scheduling entity groups a plurality of tones into uplink clusters, where each uplink cluster includes one or more adjacent tones. In addition, the scheduling entity maps a first set of uplink clusters to a first virtual cluster group (VCG) for an uplink control channel, assigns the first VCG to a first scheduled entity of the set of one or more scheduled entities, provides a first VCG index identifying the first VCG to the first scheduled entity and receives uplink control information from the first scheduled entity on the first VCG over the uplink control channel.