Carrier aggregation and dual connectivity leverage multiple component carriers to increase the effective bandwidth available to a given UE. Embodiments of this disclosure extend the concept of carrier aggregation and dual connectivity by using a physical component carrier and one or more virtual component carriers from one physical component carrier group and/or one virtual component carrier group, which have the same carrier frequency and carrier bandwidth as the physical component carrier, to transmit data streams to a user equipment. Data streams communicated over the physical component carrier and the virtual component carrier(s) may be orthogonal in the time domain or code domain. Alternatively, data streams communicated over the physical component carrier and the virtual component carrier(s) may be non-orthogonal, in which case the UE may need to decode the respective data streams using non-orthogonal signal processing techniques.