In the following description of exemplary embodiments, reference is made to the accompanying drawings which form a part hereof, and in which it is shown by way of illustration of specific embodiments in which the invention may be practiced. It is to be understood that other embodiments may be utilized and structural changes may be made without departing from the scope of the preferred embodiments of the invention.
In a wireless communication system, such as LTE and/or Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS), in some embodiments, device(s) follow the procedure described below when the device(s) initially access a network. LTE and UMTS are used as examples below, within parentheses. First, the procedure for a device to access a network (e.g., a random access) is described as a flow chart 100 of FIG. 1. Following the description of the procedure, a variety of terms used in the procedure (e.g., synchronization, measurement, and system information) are discussed in further detail. Subsequently, the random access is discussed.
Referring now to FIG. 1, the procedure 100 starts at operation 102 in which the device searches for one or more synchronization signals, e.g., in the time, frequency, code, spatial and/or other domains. In some embodiments, the one or more synchronization signals may be transmitted by one or more TP's, which will be discussed in further detail below. In LTE, for example, UEs initially search for the primary synchronization signals (PSS) and secondary synchronization signals (SSS). In some LTE UE embodiments, UE's also include cell-specific reference signals (CRS) in the set of synchronization signals. In some embodiments, the device may initially search for one or more System Signature Indices (SSI), which may be a synchronization signal.