Systems and methods are disclosed for minimizing latency between receipt of a NACK at a base station from a user equipment (UE) and retransmission of data to the UE. Time constraints for processing the ACK/NACK are relaxed so the base station can decode the ACK/NACK to determine whether a NACK has been received and then prepare for transmission of the appropriate data to the UE in the immediately following transmission time interval (TTI). These constraints are relaxed by separating download data indicator (DDI) from the PDCCH control data and delaying transmission of the DDI until decoding of the ACK/NACK.