Cell search in Long Term Evolution systems: Primary and secondary synchronization

In order that an User Equipment (UE) can access a cell in a Long Term Evolution (LTE) systems, it must be able to perform an initial synchronization and search for a base station (eNodeB) to establish the downlink (DL) access. This process is called the initial cell search. Two synchronization signals are available to accomplish this process: the primary synchronization signal (PSS) and the secondary synchronization signal (SSS). In this paper we study and propose modifications of existing algorithms and synchronization schemes combining the advantages of auto-correlation and cross correlation based detection algorithms, making use of the properties of Zadoff-Chu (ZC) and pseudo-noise (PN) sequences. The performances of the reviewed and proposed schemes are evaluated by simulations.