Channel quality metric is an important parameter for the adaptive Long Term Evolution (LTE) uplink, and has a great effect on the performance of the uplink. By modelling the data transmission in the LTE uplink as the complex modulated data pass through the additive Gaussian channel in the transform domain, the authors proposed a new metric, the ratio of the received equivalent average bit power to the average bit error power based on the idea of the modulation error ratio. The adaptive scheme with the proposed metric in the LTE uplink is also given. Simulation results demonstrate that the authors' proposed metric has a better control of the block error rate and can improve % in the throughput compared with the best metric among the conventional channel quality metrics.