The present application discloses a downlink transmission method including: UE receiving configuration information sent form base station and accordingly adjusting CQI table and MCS table; UE measuring and reporting downlink channel quality indicator information to the base station; here, the UE reports the CQI information according to a backward compatible CQI table or a CQI table which supports 256QAM modulation; the UE receiving downlink scheduling information sent from the base station, receiving accordingly downlink data sent from the base station, here, the UE processes the MCS information according to a backward compatible MCS table or a MCS table which supports 256QAM modulation.