Methods and apparatus are provided for a User Equipment (UE) and a base station in communication with each other to determine parameters for a Random Access (RA) process. The base station informs the UE through a System Information Block (SIB) of a number of resource sets for RA preamble transmission by the UE. Each resource set is associated with a number of repetitions for a RA preamble transmission, with a maximum number of RA preamble transmissions, and with a number of repetitions the base station transmits a response to a RA preamble reception. The SIB also informs an association between a range of path-loss values and a number of RA preamble repetitions. The UE determines a number of repetitions for a first RA preamble transmission from its path-loss measurement.