An Efficient Synchronization Signal Structure for OFDM-Based Cellular Systems

OFDM has been a widely accepted technology in high rate and multimedia data service systems such as long term evolution (LTE) in the 3rd generation partnership project (3GPP). In this paper, we investigate a synchronization signal structure and corresponding cell search algorithm in the LTE system where two, primary and secondary synchronization signals are employed. We focus on the secondary synchronization signal which possesses two layered scrambling sequences in addition to basic sequences. These scrambling sequences minimize performance degradation in cell search, but incur a high complexity to a mobile station receiver. In this paper, we propose a new secondary synchronization signal structure which does not require additional scrambling sequences while maintaining almost the same performance as the current LTE scheme. We evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme under various channel environments by examining the impacts of multipath fading, frequency offset, and vehicular speed. We also compare the complexity of the proposed scheme with the LTE scheme.