Patent ID: 8688049

Claim:
A method of predicting Channel Quality Indicator (CQI) values, the method being performed at a base station operating in a radio access network and comprising: receiving a sequence of Channel Quality Indicator (CQI) values sampled at times t=1 . . . n, from a plurality of user equipment; estimating, for each received specific CQI value k, a conditional expectation of the CQI value k at a time t+d, given the specific CQI value k at time t; and obtaining a predicted CQI value for the specific CQI value k, wherein the predicted CQI value is the estimated conditional expectation of the CQI value at time t+d for the specific CQI value k; wherein the predicted CQI value is denoted by {circumflex over (X)} t+d Re f (k); wherein the predicted CQI value is obtained by calculating a result for X ^ t + d Ref â¡ ( k ) = 1 ( # â¢ X t = k ) â¢ âˆ‘ t â¢ ( X t + d | X t = k ) , wherein Xt is the CQI value at time t, and wherein # is the total number of received CQI values where the CQI at time t equals k for the plurality of user equipment.