Described are methods, systems and devices for the transmission and reception of channel quality indicator (CQI) information over an physical channel to facilitate, for example, meeting block error rate requirements in emerging systems. One example method includes transmitting an index associated with a quality of the physical channel, where the index corresponds to an entry in a parameter table set. Another example method includes receiving an index associated with the quality of the downlink physical channel, and transmitting a plurality of data blocks, where contents of the plurality of data blocks are encoded and modulated using a code rate and a modulation scheme, respectively, which are selected from an entry in the parameter tables corresponding to the index. In both exemplary methods, one or more parameter tables include at least three entries comprising code rates having values less than or equal to 120/1024.