A reference signal measurement method, a reference signal sending method, a user equipment, and a base station are provided. According to the embodiments of the present application, a user equipment determines reference signal resource configuration, which includes reference signal port configuration, reference signal subframe configuration, and reference signal configuration, and a quantity of ports configured in the reference signal port configuration is N; receives a reference signal according to the reference signal resource configuration; and performs measurement based on the received reference signal to obtain channel state information and/or signal quality information. In the embodiments of the present invention, a quantity of ports configured in the reference signal port configuration is N; and a quantity of supported ports may vary with different values of N.