Methods, systems, and devices are described for wireless communications. The use of at least two channel quality indicator (CQI) tables is supported. One of the at least two CQI table is identified. The identified CQI table is used to generate a CQI value for a wireless channel. In addition, the use of at least two modulation and coding scheme (MCS) tables is supported. A transmission is received via a wireless channel. One of the at least two MCS tables is identified to use for the received transmission. Further, a transport block size (TBS) table is identified that is mapped from the identified MCS table. The identified TBS table is used to determine a size of the received transmission.