A receiver processes a data signal and provides an acknowledgement within a turnaround time through use of code block alignment, reduced complexity or increased processing time. In a first embodiment, a radio access network (RAN) node enables encoded information to be segmented into multiple code blocks and maps a group of code blocks to be aligned with orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) symbol boundaries such that efficient receiver processing can implement processing pipelining. In a second embodiment, the transmitter can provide more time or reduce the complexity of the packet, such as by repetition of bits of code blocks of the encoded information or by reserving resource elements (REs) such that the receiver has effectively more time (or less complexity) to process the last or last few code blocks of the packet.