LTE Optimization

CQI stands for Channel Quality Indicator and is a value reported by UEs to indicate channel quality and request a corresponding transport block size and throughput. CQI values range from 0-30 for HSDPA and 1-15 for LTE, with higher values indicating better quality. The reported CQI is used by the network to determine the appropriate transport block size to use to transmit data to the UE.

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LTE Optimization

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Hasib Abdullah Al

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CQI – Channel Quality Indicator

2 Feb

CQI

CQI stands for Channel Quality Indicator. As the name implies, it is an indicator carrying the information
on how good/bad the communication channel quality is. This CQI is for HSDPA. (LTE also has CQI for its
own purpose).

CQI is the information that UE sends to the network and practically it implies the following two

i) Current Communication Channel Quality is this-and-that..

ii) I (UE) wants to get the data with this-and-that transport block size, which in turn can be directly
converted into throughput

In HSDPA, the CQI value ranges from 0 ~ 30. 30 indicates the best channel quality and 0,1 indicates the
poorest channel quality. Depending which value UE reports, network transmit data with different
transport block size. If network gets high CQI value from UE, it transmit the data with larger transport
block size and vice versa.

What if network sends a large transport block even though UE reports low CQI, it is highly probable that
UE failed to decode it (cause CRC error on UE side) and UE send NACK to network and the network have
to retransmit it which in turn cause waste of radio resources.

What if UE report high CQI even when the real channel quality is poor ? In this case, network would send
a large transport block size according to the CQI value and it would become highly probable that UE
failed to decode it (cause CRC error on UE side) and UE send NACK to network and the network have to
retransmit it which in turn cause waste of radio resources.
How UE can measure CQI ? This is the most unclear topic to me. As far as I know, there is no explicit
description in any standard on the mechanism by which the CQI is calculated, but it is pretty obvious that
the following factors play important roles to CQI measurement.

signal-to-noise ratio (SNR)

signal-to-interference plus noise ratio (SINR)

signal-to-noise plus distortion ratio (SNDR)

It is unclear how these factors are used and whether there is any other factors being involved. I was told
the detailed CQI measurement algorithm is up UE implementation (chipset implementation).

In LTE, there are 15 different CQI values randing from 1 to 15 and mapping between CQI and
modulcation scheme, transport block size is defined as follows (36.213)

If you are an engineer in Network (eNodeB) programming, you need to know the number of resource
blocks and MCS for each CQI value to properly allocate the resources for each of UEs. With the
modulation scheme in the table, you would get a certain range of MCS you can use for each CQI index.
But you cannot pinpoint a specific MCS and Number of RBs. You need another condition to get the
proper MCS and N RBs and it is ‘Code Rate‘ shown in the table. But still there is not a single formula that
would give you a single/determined value for MCS and NRB. You have to come up with a set of MCS and
N RB that meet the modulation scheme and Code Rate requirement in the table. One example case can
be as follows.

CQI

Modulation

Bits/Symbol
REs/PRB

N_RB

MCS

TBS

Code Rate

QPSK

138

536
0.101449

QPSK

138