QCI (Channel Quality Indication) report is an important element of LTE and has significant impact on the system

performance. There are two types of QCI report in LTE: periodic and aperiodic. The periodic QCI report is carried by
PUCCH. But if the UE needs to send UL data in the same subframe as the scheduled periodic QCI report, the
periodic QCI report will use the PUSCH, together with UL data transmission. This is because a UE can't transmit on
both PUCCH and PUSCH simultaneously. In this case, the periodic PUCCH resource will be idle. Since periodic QCI
report brings in the "always on" signaling overhead, the report granularity is relatively rough. In order to get more
detail QCI report, the eNB can trigger aperiodic QCI report when needed. The aperiodic QCI report is transmitted on
PUSCH, together with UL data or alone.
The granularity of QCI report can be divided into three levels: wideband, UE selected subband, and higher layer
configured subband. The wideband report provides one QCI value for the entire downlink system bandwidth. The UE
selected subband QCI report divides the system bandwidth into multiple subbands, selects a set of preferred
subbands (the best M subbands), then reports one QCI value for the wideband and one differential QCI value for the
set (assume transmission only over the selected M subbands). The higher layer configured subband report provides
the highest granularity. It divides the entire system bandwidth into multiple subbands, then reports one wideband QCI
value and multiple differential QCI values, one for each subband.
If closed loop MIMO is used, PMI (Precoding Matrix Indicator) and RI (Rank Indication) are also reported. PMI
indicates the codebook (pre-agreed parameters) the eNB should use for data transmission over multiple antennas
based on the evaluation of received reference signal. RI indicates the number of transmission layers that the UE can
distinguish. Spatial multiplexing can be supported only when RI>1. For spatial multiplexing, QCI is reported based on
per codeword. The maximum number of codeword in LTE is two.
There are seven transmission modes in LTE, each one is corresponding to certain multiple antenna techniques. For
each transmission mode, certain combination of QCI report is defined in the specs, based on periodic/aperiodic,
wideband/UE selected subband/higher layer configured subband, No PMI/single PMI/multiple PMI. Since RI changes
slower than QCI/PMI, it is reported with a longer interval on periodic report. It is reported together with QCI/PMI on
aperiodic report since the resource on PUSCH is less limited.