A system and method for the quantization of channel state vectors is provided. A method for communications node operation includes measuring a communications channel between the communications node and a controller, generating channel state information based on the measurement, computing a bit representation of the channel state information, transmitting the bit representation to the controller, and receiving a transmission from the controller. The computing makes use of tail-biting trellis decoding, and the transmission makes use of the channel state information transmitted by the communications node.