A Novel SIR to Channel-Quality Indicator (CQI)

Mapping Method for HSDPA System

Kyungsu Ko, Daewon Lee, Moohong Lee and Hwang Soo Lee
Department of EECS, Division of Electrical Engineering, KAIST
373-1, Guseong-dong, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon, 305-701, Republic of Korea
Tel: +82-42-869-5428, Fax: +82-42-869-8670

e-mail: starry@mcl.kaist.ac.kr

Abstract To support very high data rate services that require

higher system capacity, the high speed downlink packet access
(HSDPA) was proposed in the UMTS standard. One of key
techniques supporting the HSDPA services is the adaptive
modulation and coding (AMC) in which the modulation scheme
and the coding rate are adaptively changed to match the current
channel condition reported by the user equipment (UE).
Therefore, the mapping between the channel quality indicator
(CQI) and signal to interference ratio (SIR) is closely related to
the accuracy of AMC and the performance of HSDPA. This paper
proposes a novel SIR to CQI mapping method that satisfies the
3GPP requirements. In order to verify the performance of the
proposed mapping method, we implemented the link-level
simulator which is composed of all the physical layer blocks
depicted in the 3GPP standard. With the proposed mapping
method, we show that UE can report the exact channel condition
and the system can yield performance exceeding the requirements
in the 3GPP technical specification.
Index Terms AMC, CQI, HARQ, HSDPA, SIR, UMTS

I. INTRODUCTION
Mobile cellular devices, what first started out as a tool for
sending voice through wireless environments, now can receive
text messages and multimedia data, and provide the interactive
environment for playing games. To satisfy the demand for more
data at higher data rates, many of the cellular systems created
high speed data access schemes such as enhanced data rate for
GSM evolution (EDGE) for GSM systems, EV-DO and
EV-DV for CDMA 2000 systems, and high speed downlink
packet access (HSDPA) for WCDMA systems.
HSDPA is a new scheme in the standard air interface created
by 3GPP. The main idea of HSDPA is to use user diversity on a
shared link channel. HSDPA utilizes powerful channel coding
method called the turbo coding with adaptive modulation and
coding (AMC) mechanism and a hybrid ARQ (HARQ) scheme
to maximize throughput.
This entire HSDPA mechanism is based on the fact that the
user equipment (UE) can provide the Node-B with the channel
quality indicator (CQI). The 3GPP specification does not state
how CQI should be generated. It is entirely up to the UE
designer. The only requirement it must satisfy is that the block

1-4244-0063-5/06/$20.00 2006 IEEE

error rate (BLER) with CQI fed from UE must be under 10%.
In this paper we propose a novel method to create CQI values
using signal to interference ratio (SIR) and the mapping
procedure. We make the SIR to CQI mapping graph for three
different SIR measurement methods and confirm that the CQI
generation using this method performs well within the 3GPP
specifications through simulation.
The remaining part of this paper is organized as follows:
Section II introduces the key features of the HSDPA system,
and Section III discusses the SIR measuring techniques. In
Section IV, we propose the SIR to CQI mapping method.
Section V describes the simulation environments and evaluates
the performance of the proposed scheme. Finally, conclusions
are made in Section VI.

II. HSDPA SYSTEM

The HSDPA system is a new system that has been included
in the Release 5 of the 3GPP specifications. The main idea of
HSDPA is to use multi-user diversity. Since HSDPA has a
single downlink channel shared by multiple users, each user
may experience different channel conditions. In HSDPA, each
UE reports back to the Node-B of its channel quality with a CQI
value. Then the Node-B can decide how to allocate time slots in
the shared downlink channel to UEs. Usually it allocates time
slots in the shared downlink channel to the user with the most
excellent channel conditions to increase the overall throughput
of the system.
A. AMC
As HSDPA exploits multi-user diversity, it requires users to
report back each users channel condition by means of CQI.
With the use of CQI values at the Node-B, it can send data to
the user at the optimum channel coding rate for that particular
channel quality. These channel coding rates can be achieved
using turbo encoding with bit puncturing or bit repetition. AMC
utilizes this system and formats the data block to be transported
to the user with a specific channel coding rate and modulation
scheme according to the CQI value received from the user.

B. HARQ
The term Hybrid comes from the fact HARQ is essentially
a hybrid of ARQ system and the soft combining technique. The
main idea of HARQ is not to waste packets even if there are
some errors in them. All data packets that are sent to the users
are appended with a cyclic redundancy check for error
detection. So when a corrupted data packet is received by the
user, the user sends back a NACK signal through the uplink and
request for a retransmission of that particular packet. Then the
Node-B retransmits the packet to the user, the user does soft
combining the newly received packet with the old corrupted
packet using chase combing technique or incremental
redundancy technique.
Chase combining is used when the retransmitted packet is
exactly the same as the corrupted packet that was received
before. It combines the two packets using maximal ratio
combing. Incremental redundancy is another HARQ technique
wherein instead of sending simple repeats of the entire coded
packet, additional redundant information is incrementally
transmitted if the decoding fails on the first attempt.

III.

measurement.
Equation (1) can be developed as follows
SIR ( x ) =

E [ x]

SIR ( x) =

Var [ x ]

(1)

We have used the CPICH pilot symbols for the input signal.
The reason why we used pilot symbols instead of data symbols
is because in HSDPA there are too many data symbols, when
using pilot symbols the entire SIR measuring process is much
easier. Also since the data symbols are modulated into QPSK or
16 QAM symbols, the variance of the input signal might be
affected by different input bit sequences. The CPICH pilot
symbols in HSDPA were all mapped into a single QPSK
symbol. This means the pilot symbols are very constant signals.
If there are variations within the signal, they are due to the
wireless channel effects and noise. These facts make the
CPICH pilot symbols an ideal input source for the SIR

k =1

xk

(2)

k =1

1
N

k =1

B. Modified SIR Measurement

The conventional SIR measurement defines signal power as
the mean of the signal squared. Although this represents pretty
accurate picture, there are problems when the noise power is
high. One of the problems is that SIR means signal to
interference and noise ratio, but in the conventional SIR
measurement the signal power actually contains noise and
interference power. This effect acts as an offset in the SIR and
when the noise and interference power increases it deviates
from the actual SIR. The modified SIR measurement method
compensates for this problem by estimating the interference
power and subtracting it from the signal mean power as follows
Is =

A. Conventional SIR Measurement

The conventional SIR measurement technique is to measure
squared mean of the input signal and divided it by the variance
of the input signal.

where N is the number of CPICH symbols in a TTI, and xk is

CPICH pilot symbols.

SIR MEASUREMENT

Although there might be many ways to measure the wireless

channel conditions, we believe SIR is the best measure for
quantifying the quality of the channel. The main reason SIR is
good measurement reference for CQI is because the transport
block size selection in HSDPA targets a 1dB step size in SIR in
AWGN channel conditions for a BLER of 10% [8]. SIR can be
measured differently according to different methods of
measuring interference and noise. For the CQI generation
methods we use three different SIR measuring techniques.

1
N

1
N

1
2 ( N 1)
Es =

N 1

k =1

1
N

x k x k +1

(4)

xk

k =1

Is
N
N Es Is

E s = E s

SI R ( x ) =

E s
=
Is

(3)

N Is

(5)
(6)

where xk is the CPICH pilot symbol and N is the number of

CPICH pilot symbols in one TTI [1].
C. Vector Based Interference Projection SIR Measurement
The vector based interference projection (VBIP) SIR is an
SIR measurement method for CDMA systems [7]. It utilizes the
orthogonal codes used in CDMA systems. VBIP uses the
unused code in the downlink channel to project the interference
and noise on to that code. Since all codes must be applied on to
chips not symbols, and processing chip information into
symbols and equalizing them takes time, this method has the
advantage of calculating SIR quickly. This method is also
different from other method since it does not utilize the CPICH
pilot symbols at all. It only needs information on which codes
are being used in the CDMA system and which codes are not
being used.
S2+I +N ( y) =

1
1 N 1 SF

E y H y = y(SF k + n) y* (SF k + n). (7)

M
N k =1 SF n=1

yH c* cT y 1 N 1
=
2
c

N k =1 SF

I2+ N ( y) = E

(8)

c
(
n
)
y
(
SF
k
n
)

+
.

n =1

SF

SIR ( x ) =

S2 + I + N
1 .
I2+ N

(9)

Start

Set the channel mode

out of PA3, PB3, VA30,
VA120

Equation (9) represents VBIP SIR measurement, where c(n)

is the unused CDMA code, SF is the spreading factor of c(n),
y(n) is the input chip signal, and N is the number of chips in one
TTI divided by SF.

Set HS-PDSCH Ec/Ior =3dB (or -6db)

Calculate accumulated
BLER over 1500 cycles
(PA3:15000)

BLER > 0.102

Yes

Increase
Ior/Ioc by 2dB

Decrease
Ior/Ioc by 2dB

No
Yes
BLER < 0.098

Set Ior/Ioc
-50dB ~ 10dB

No

IV. PROPOSED SIR TO CQI MAPPING METHOD

Choose CQI value = 1

Draw a histogram of
measured SIR distribution
and find average SIR

The method to generate CQI values and make a mapping

table from the generated CQI values is based on the fact that the
transport block size (TBS) selection in HSDPA targets a 1 dB
step size in SIR in AWGN channel conditions for a BLER of
10%. It is desired that transmitter sends data as many as
possible within the BLER 10% criterion. A high CQI value
means a high SIR and a good channel condition, and the higher
CQI value UE reports, the larger transport block is transmitted.
If Node B transmits a TBS larger than the one suited to current
channel condition, the block will be corrupted. So the goal is to
find the optimal CQI value from the estimated SIR at UE. This
is same as finding the optimal transport block size, number of
multicodes and modulation scheme in the system.
The flowchart of the SIR to CQI value mapping algorithm is
depicted Fig. 1. The procedure starts from setting the channel
condition, such as PA3, PB3, VA30 and VA120 that show ITU
pedestrian A with 3km/h, pedestrian B with 3km/h, vehicular A
with 30km/h and vehicular A with 120km/h respectively. Then
set the HS-PDSCH_Ec/Ior (HS-PDSCH power to transmitted
power ratio) -3dB or -6dB, Ior/Ioc (transmitted power to
interference power ratio) -50~10dB and CQI value according to
condition we want to simulate. After setting the transport block
size, modulation scheme, number of multicodes based on
chosen CQI value, we run simulation (in case of PA3, 15000
cycles or frames, and in other cases 1500 cycles or frames) and
record SIR estimations for each transport block. Because
BLERs of the target systems is near 10%, we calculated all the
BLERs for all the simulations. If BLER is beyond the range
between 9.8 ~10.2%, then adjust Ior/Ioc value properly and run
the simulation repeatedly until BLER in the range of
9.8~10.2% is found. Here, if BLER is larger than 10.2%,then
we should increase Ior/Ioc since excessive interference causes
block errors deviating from the standard, and if the BLER is
smaller than 9.8%, then we should decrease the Ior/Ioc since
there is a margin in the block error rate. Once BLER near 10%
(9.8 ~ 10.2%) is found, draw a histogram of SIR distribution for
the simulation and find average SIR. Finally match this average
SIR to the CQI value used for the simulation. Repeat these steps
for all CQI values 1 through 30.

Set TB size, modulation

scheme, No.# of
multicodes based on
chosen CQI

Match this average SIR to

the CQI value used for
simulation

2
Run simulation 1500
cycles (PA3:15000cycles)

Measure and store each

SIR estimation for each
cycle

Increase CQI value by 1

CQI value <=

30

Yes
1

No
End

Fig. 1. Flowchart of SIR to CQI value mapping algorithm

V. SIMULATION
A. HSDPA Link Level Simulator
Currently the HSDPA system is designed for WCDMA
which is a specification created by 3GPP. The simulator
consists of a Node-B transmitter, a wireless channel and a UE
receiver. The Node-B transmitter consists of a bit-rate
processing (BRP) block and a chip-rate processing (CRP)
block. The UE receiver consists of blocks complement to the
Node-B transmitter. This simulator is designed with an
equalizer instead of a conventional rake receiver usually used in
a CDMA system. The reason why equalizer is used is because
as the wireless channel effects increase the performance of the
rake receiver decreases significantly. A good Equalizer can
cancel out the wireless channel effects and have better
performance than a conventional rake receiver. The SIR
measurement equations are slightly modified to be used with an
equalizer. The equalizer type used is the conjugate gradient
algorithm.
The wireless channel is implemented using the improved
Jakes fader [6] with a tapped delay line model. The power
delay profiles are used from the 3GPP specification channel
testing conditions [1].
B. Simulation Results
Figs. 2, 3, and 4 show the results from many simulations. The
dots represent values of average SIR where the system has
BLER of 10% for a specific CQI.
The simulation results show that the modified SIR values are
the most consistent throughout the different channel conditions.
The SIR dots not shown in the result figures such as SIR values

C Q I v s . C o n v e n t io n a l S I R

C o n v e n t io n a l S IR E s tim a tio n v s . C Q I
40

U pp e r P a rt
Y = 1 2 .6 2 3 6 7 2 2 0 9 + 0 . 6 9 7 1 5 8 3 5 4 X

35

1 00

L ow e r P a rt
Y = 3 . 6 9 8 8 4 4 4 2 5 + 1 .1 3 3 9 9 8 6 5 8 X

30

SIR

SIR (dB)

25

10

15

P A 3 - E c /Io r -3 d B
P B 3 - E c /Io r -3 d B
V A 3 0 - E c / Io r - 3 d B
V A 1 2 0 - E c /I o r - 3 d B

1
0

10

12

14

16

18

20

20

C o n v e n tio n a l S IR , E c /I o r - 3 d B
C o n v e n tio n a l S IR , E c /I o r - 3 d B
L in e a r F it o f L o w e r P a rt
L in e a r F it o f U p p e r P a rt

10
5

22

10

12

14

CQI

16

18

20

22

24

26

28

30

CQI

Fig. 2. Conventional SIR vs. CQI at system BLER of 10%

Fig. 5. Conventional SIR to CQI mapping by linear fitting

L o u a y 's M o d ifie d S IR E s tim a tio n v s . C Q I

C Q I v s . L o u a y S IR E s tim a t io n
40

U p per P art
Y = 1 4 .0 0 4 6 8 6 1 3 5 + 0 .6 4 0 0 1 4 5 4 9 X

35

100

L ow er P art
Y = 5 .2 4 9 4 5 0 5 5 2 + 1 .0 7 1 4 2 6 3 7 X

SIR

SIR (dB)

30

10

20
15

P A 3 - E c /Io r - 3 d B
P B 3 - E c /Io r - 3 d B
V A 3 0 - E c /Io r - 3 d B
V A 1 2 0 - E c /Io r - 3 d B

25

L o u a y's M o d ifie d S IR , E c /Io r -3 d B

L o u a y's M o d ifie d S IR , E c /Io r -3 d B
L in e a r F it o f L o w e r P a rt
L in e a r F it o f U p p e r P a rt

10
5

10

12

14

16

18

20

22

10

12

14

16

18

20

22

24

26

28

30

CQI

CQI

Fig. 3. Modified (Louay) SIR vs. CQI at system BLER of 10%

Fig. 6. Modified (Louay) SIR to CQI mapping by linear fitting

C h ip -b a s e d V B IP S IR E s tim a tio n v s . C Q I

C Q I v s . V B I P S IR E s tim a t io n

48

U p pe r P art
Y = 2 3 .9 4 6 5 1 9 9 4 5 + 0 .6 3 4 6 8 3 0 0 4 X

46
44

Low e r P art
2
Y = 2 5 .3 5 1 3 4 4 5 5 2 - 0 .2 1 3 1 4 7 3 6 7 X + 0 .0 4 3 2 7 6 1 2 X

42

1000

SIR

SIR (dB)

40

100

38
36
34
32
30

P A 3 - E c /Io r - 3 d B
P B 3 - E c /Io r - 3 d B
V A 3 0 - E c /Io r - 3 d B
V A 1 2 0 - E c /I o r - 3 d B

10
0

10

12

14

16

18

20

22

CQI

Fig. 4. VBIP SIR vs. CQI at system BLER of 10%

at CQI 20 in channel condition VA120 do not exist, because at

VA120 channel condition no matter how the noise and
interference level decrease the HSDPA system will not achieve
BLER of 10% or lower. So points that can not be represented
are not shown. VBIP SIR values show non-linear properties in
fitting data points between SIR and CQI.
The average SIR values of different channel conditions for
each CQI value are shown in Figs. 5, 6, and 7. It can be seen
that the simulation result curves tend to saturate when the CQI
values gets higher than 20. Therefore we considered this fact to
make a second linear fitting curve around CQI values over 20
using results from the AWGN channel. The two linear fitting
curves can be seen in Figs. 5 and 6, and the non-linear fitting
curve and linear fitting curve for higher CQI values can be seen

V B IP S IR E s tim a tio n , E c / Io r - 3 d B
V B IP S IR E s tim a tio n , E c / Io r - 3 d B
2 n d O r d e r F it o f L o w e r P a r t
L In e a r F it o f U p p e r P a r t

28
26
24
0

10

15

20

25

30

CQI

Fig. 7. VBIP SIR to CQI mapping by 2nd order non-linear fitting

in Fig. 7. Through these fitting curves the mapping table

between SIR and CQI is determined.
The 3GPP specifications state that the shared downlink
HS-PDSCH channels can either take -3dB or -6dB of the entire
Node-B transmission. The simulation results of Figs. 1 to 3
were done when the HS-PDSCH channels take up -3dB of the
entire Node-B transmission power. When the HS-PDSCH
channels take up -6dB of the entire Node-B transmission
power, the SIR to CQI linear fitting curve is expected move by
3dB since the signal power is being decrease by 3dB.
Simulation results have shown that almost every point between
SIR and CQI values when system had BLER of 10%, moved by
close to 3dB.

C. Simulation Verification through 3GPP Specification

Requirement Testing
There are two types of tests that the UE CQI reporting must
satisfy. These two tests are designed by the 3GPP to confirm
the operation of CQI reporting. The first test is done on the
AWGN channel and the second test is done on the fading
channel. All the procedures of the test are written in [4]. Table
I, II and III are the CQI reporting test simulation results for the
three different SIR measurement methods. The CQI reporting
created using conventional SIR and modified (Louay) SIR
measurements passed all the criteria of the 3GPP specification
CQI reporting tests. The CQI reporting created using VBIP SIR
passed the CQI reporting test fading channel conditions but
failed the AWGN channel conditions.

TABLE I
3GPP CQI TESTING REQUIREMENT RESULT FOR CONVENTIONAL SIR

Median
Median BLER
Median+2
BLER
Median-1
BLER
R1 event
(Median-CQI
BLER)
R2 event
(Median-CQI+
3 BLER)
UE Pass/Fail

Test 1
1841/2000
4.1%

AWGN
Test 2
1827/2000
3.6%

Test 3
1842/2000
3.2%

Fading
Test 1
Test 2
16
18
~
~

28%

27.7%

26.5%

0.7%

10%

0%

0%

PASSED

PASSED

PASSED

PASSED

PASSED

TABLE II
3GPP CQI TESTING REQUIREMENT RESULT FOR MODIFIED (LOUAY) SIR
AWGN

VI. CONCLUSION
In this paper, we proposed a method to generate CQI values
using SIR and the mapping procedure between them. In the
proposed method, the simulator in which all the physical layer
blocks are implemented is used to estimate the SIR at UE,
report the CQI to Node B, and verify our SIR to CQI mapping
method in the exact HSDPA service environment. The SIR is
estimated by three different techniques, so the SIR to CQI
mapping table is created for three different SIR measurement
methods. With the proposed method, UE can report the optimal
CQI values which represent the exact downlink channel
conditions and the system can yield throughput exceeding the
requirements of the 3GPP specifications.

Fading

Test 1

Test 2

Test 3

Test 1

Test 2

Median

1894/2000

1903/2000

1896/2000

15

17

Median BLER

0.67%

0.5%

0.4%

Median+2
BLER

83%

81%

77%

Median-1 BLER

9%

6%

9%

0%

R1 event
(Median-CQI
BLER)
R2 event
(Median-CQI+3
BLER)
UE Pass/Fail

PASSED

PASSED

PASSED

PASSED PASSED

TABLE III
3GPP CQI TESTING REQUIREMENT RESULT FOR VBIP SIR
AWGN

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This research was supported in part by MIC (Ministry of
Information and Communication) & IITA (Institute for
Information Technology Advancement), Korea, through
TI-KAIST international joint program conducted by MMPC
(Mobile Media Platform Center) of KAIST

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[2]

[3]

[4]

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[6]

[7]

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