The LTE system design goal is optimization for low mobile speeds ranging from stationary users to up to 15 km/h mobile speeds. At these low speeds, eNode-B can exploit multi-user diversity gains by employing channel sensitive scheduling. For downlink transmissions, UEs feed back downlink channel quality information back to the eNode-B. Using a channel quality sensitive scheduler such as proportional fair scheduler, eNode-B can serve a UE on time-frequency resources where it is experiencing the best conditions. It is well known that when multi-user diversity can be exploited, use of other forms of diversity such as transmit diversity degrades performance. This is because multi-user diversity relies on large variations in channel conditions while the transmit diversity tries to average out the channel variations.

The LTE system is also required to support speeds ranging from 15–120 km/h with high performance. Actually, the system requirements state mobility support up to 350 km/h or even up to 500 km/h. At high UE speeds, the channel quality feedback becomes unreliable due to feedback delays. When reliable channel quality estimates are not available at eNode-B, channel-sensitive scheduling becomes infeasible. Under these conditions, it is desired to average out the channel variations by all possible means. Moreover, the channel sensitive scheduler has to wait for the right (good) channel conditions when a UE can be scheduled. This introduces delays in packet transmissions. For delay-sensitive traffic such as VoIP application, channel-sensitive scheduling cannot be used under most conditions.