Rapid cell search in OFDM-based cellular systems

Cell search is one of the most important issues in cellular systems. There have been large efforts on the synchronization problem in OFDM systems. However, conventional OFDM-based cellular schemes may have problems in initial timing acquisition and cell identification, requiring a large cell search time. In this paper, we propose a novel three-step cell search scheme using a new preamble for OFDM-based cellular systems. Simulation results show that the proposed cell search scheme can provide fast cell search performance in multi-cell environment, while reducing the computational complexity.