Patent ID: 8422393

Claim:
A method for a user equipment (UE) to transmit a channel quality indicator (CQI) to a base station, the method comprising: selecting a preferred set of M subbands among a set of N subbands, wherein the set of N subbands spans an entire downlink system bandwidth; reporting the positions of the M selected subbands using a combinatorial index selected from among {0, 1, . . . , N C M −1}; reporting one CQI value representing wideband CQI index for the set of N subbands; and reporting one differential CQI value reflecting the transmission of the base station only over the M selected subbands among a predetermined number of differential CQI values, wherein each of the differential CQI values is defined based on an offset level corresponding to: a CQI index for the M selected subbands—the wideband CQI index, and wherein the differential CQI values represent more of a first case in which the offset level has a positive value than a second case in which the offset level has a negative value.