An Improved Method for Secondary Code Synchronization in WCDMA

The initial search procedure in WCDMA is used to identify the scrambling code used by the base station that has the lowest path loss coefficient of the received signal among all the other base stations. The timing relationship between base stations is asynchronous in WCDMA system. So the three-step cell search algorithm is introduced in 3GPP protocols in order to fast identify the special base station. The second step, Secondary Synchronous Channel(S-SCH) acquisition, is much critical. We have focused on the second step of the initial search procedure: frame synchronization and code-group identification. We propose partial correlation method, which extremely reduces the hardware complexity. This method minimizes the acquiring time of the scrambling code group further used for identify the scrambling code of the selected base station.