Methods, systems, and devices for wireless communication are described. A user equipment (UE) and a base station may use low latency communications to improve the throughput of a wireless link. To facilitate efficient low latency communication, the UE may send UE-initiated CSI reports in addition to periodic and base station-initiated reports. For example, the UE may, in various examples, send UE-initiated CSI reports using contention based spectrum, using a request-to-transmit, or using a CSI differential (i.e., an indicator of a change in channel conditions). The base station may schedule different UEs for uplink low latency communication by providing resources to each UE for CSI and scheduling requests (SRs) using coherent or non-coherent uplink transmissions. The CSI and SR may also be combined with uplink feedback.