An apparatus and method are described. The apparatus includes a transceiver and processor, which attach transport block (TB) level CRC bits to a TB, select an LDPC base graph (BG) based on a code rate (CR) and TB size of the TB including TB level CRC bits, determine a number of code blocks (CBs) to use for segmenting the TB including TB level CRC bits depending on the selected LDPC BG, determine a single CB size for each of the CBs based on the number of CBs, segment the TB including TB level CRC bits into the CBs based on the number of CBs and CB size, pad zeros to a last CB of the CBs in the segmented TB, attach CB level CRC bits to each CB in the segmented TB, encode each CB in the segmented TB using the selected LDPC base graph, and transmit the encoded CBs.