In a mobile communication system with a shared downlink traffic channel, the mobile terminals in contention for the downlink traffic channel report channel conditions to the base stations. The base station schedules the mobile terminals based on channel quality estimates from the mobile terminals and selects a transmitter configuration. The transmitter configuration may comprise, for example, the antenna configuration, and/or power and code allocations used by the base station. The base station broadcasts the transmitter configuration to all active and inactive mobile terminals. Knowledge of the transmitter configuration by the inactive mobile terminals improves the accuracy and reliability of the channel quality estimates.