Patent ID: 8670384

Claim:
A method in a wireless communication network of facilitating cell search processes by user equipment needing to synchronize with cells in said wireless communication network, the method comprising: maintaining a set of synchronization signal sequences to be used for generating individual synchronization signals, the set of synchronization signal sequences comprising a plurality of synchronization signal sequences; maintaining a set of reference signal sequences to be used for generating individual reference signals, the set of reference signal sequences comprising a plurality of reference signal sequences; linking each of the synchronization signal sequences to one or more of the reference signal sequences according to a defined mapping to thereby enable user equipment to determine cell identities based on mapping detected synchronization signal sequences to corresponding reference signal sequences according to the defined mapping; generating individual ones of the synchronization and reference signals at each of one or more base stations in the wireless communication network, in accordance with said defined mapping; and transmitting the generated synchronization and reference signals from respective ones of the one or more base stations, to allow user equipment to synchronize with cells associated with the one or more base stations, and to determine cell identities for those cells based on mapping synchronization signal sequences to reference signal sequences according to said defined mapping; wherein maintaining a set of synchronization signal sequences to be used for generating individual ones of the synchronization signals comprises maintaining as many synchronization signal sequences as reference signal sequences; and wherein linking each of the synchronization signal sequences to one or more of the reference signal sequences according to a defined mapping comprises adopting a one-to-one mapping between synchronization signal sequences and reference signal sequences.