Secondary Synchronization Signal in 5G New Radio
Peng Wang and Fredrik Berggren
Huawei Technologies Sweden AB, Stockholm, Sweden
Email: peng.wang1@huawei.com, fredrik.b@huawei.com
Abstract—We propose a secondary synchronization signal
(SSS) for the fifth generation (5G) New Radio (NR) communica-
tion systems, which is based on the element-wise multiplication
of two BPSK modulated m-sequences with different cyclic shifts
encoding the physical cell identity (ID) carried by the NR SSS.
We present the details on the generator polynomial selection for
the involved m-sequences and the mapping between their cyclic
shift values and the cell ID. We also propose a double-threshold
detection method which is able to mitigate false cell ID detection.
Simulation results are provided to demonstrate the superiority of
the proposed NR SSS over the LTE SSS. The proposed NR SSS
has been included in 3GPP Release 15 technical specification.
Index Terms—The fifth generation (5G); New Radio (NR);
Secondary Synchronization Signal (SSS); m-sequence.
I. I NTRODUCTION
It has been widely believed that [1] various wireless appli-
cations will emerge and spread to every aspect of our daily life
in the near future. To name a few, unmanned vehicles, virtual
reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) and smart home/cities
are urgently desired in the upcoming decades. To cater for
this ever increasing demand, the fifth generation (5G) wireless
communication needs to support manifold requirements, in-
cluding higher mobility, massive access, higher data rates, and
lower latency. The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP)
has launched the standardization activity for the first phase 5G
system named New Radio (NR) towards this goal.
Like most Long Term Evolution (LTE) and LTE-Advanced
(LTE-A) based wireless systems, initial access is the first and
fundamental step in 5G NR for a user equipment (UE) to
acquire time-frequency synchronization with a cell and detect
its physical layer identity (ID). Otherwise the communication
link between the UE and network cannot be established.
In LTE/LTE-A based systems, this is achieved by the UE
detecting a pair of primary/secondary synchronization signals
(PSS/SSS) transmitted by an eNodeB nearby [2]. Evolved
from LTE/LTE-A, 5G NR is expected to also have synchro-
nization signals (SSs) undertaking similar functions as LTE
PSS/SSS. However, the NR SS faces several new challenges.
Wider bandwidth and higher carrier frequency: To solve
spectrum shortage, 5G NR aims at both re-farming the current
microwave frequency bands below 3 GHz and exploring the
higher millimeter wave frequency bands up to 52.6 GHz. Thus
the supported carrier frequency of NR could be much higher
than that of LTE, and a wider SS bandwidth is available to
provide finer time resolution.
Support of beamforming: The channel propagation loss
increases with the carrier frequency. At low frequencies,
omni-directional SS transmission may be enough to provide
978-1-5386-3180-5/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE
a sufficiently high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at the UE.
While at high frequencies, beam-formed SS transmission with
beam sweeping is needed to compensate for the increased
propagation loss and guarantee coverage. Hence a unified
NR SS compatible to both omni-directional and directional
transmissions and adaptable to different frequency bands is
required. Moreover, accumulated SS detection over multiple
time slots may be infeasible due to beam sweeping. Thus good
one-shot NR SS detection performance should be guaranteed.
Multiple numerologies: Due to different channel proper-
ties (e.g., propagation loss, delay spread, Doppler shift, etc.)
across frequency bands and various applications with different
quality-of-service (QoS) requirements, NR SSs need to be
transmitted with different numerologies, i.e., 15, 30, 120 and
240 kHz subcarrier spacings (SCSs) with proportional cyclic
prefix (CP) lengths, in different frequency bands, or even
multiple numerologies in the same frequency band. Thus a
unified NR SS adaptive to different numerologies is required.
Time-frequency ambiguity: The LTE PSS based on
Zadoff-Chu (ZC) sequences has a time-frequency ambiguity
problem, i.e., the time-frequency auto-correlation of each LTE
PSS contains several significant side lobes besides the main
lobe at zero time delay and zero carrier frequency offset
(CFO). This implies that the UE may likely synchronize to the
eNB via the PSS detection at a non-zero time delay and CFO
hypothesis, leading to wrong time-frequency synchronization
and degraded SSS detection performance (the SSS may even
become undetectable under large time/frequency errors). Such
an ambiguity problem should be avoided in NR SS.
High cross-correlation among LTE SSS sequences: The
LTE SSS is based on the interleaved concatenation of two
m-sequences with different cyclic shifts. The related mapping
between their cyclic shifts and cell ID leads to the existence of
many LTE SSS sequence pairs, for both of which one of the
two m-sequences has the same cyclic shift. The normalized
cross-correlation between such a pair of LTE SSS sequences
can be as high as 0.5, causing a high probability of wrong
SSS detection, especially when the SNR is low. Hence, NR
should consider different SSS sequence design.
Ghost cell ID detection: The LTE SSS detection is usually
done based on its concatenation structure, i.e., by separately
detecting the cyclic shifts of the two m-sequences, which then
jointly determine the cell ID carried by the LTE SSS. However,
when a UE lies on the border of two cells and simultaneously
receives LTE SSSs from both cells, it may detect one m-
sequence from one cell and another m-sequence from another
cell, creating an SSS sequence with a ghost cell ID not being
transmitted by any cell. This leads to a high probability of
wrong cell ID detection and in turn long access delay. In LTE,
this issue can to a certain extent be alleviated by performing
cell ID verification via the always-on common reference signal
(CRS), which is scrambled by the cell ID. For NR, thereis no
always-on reference signal and the problem needs to be solved
inherently by proper SSS sequence selection.
Larger number of cell IDs: LTE supports 504 cell IDs,
which has turned out to be a bit too small, e.g., in small cell
deployments. Hence, NR should provide more than 504 cell
IDs. This in turn requires more NR SSS sequences.
In this paper, we provide an NR SSS that solves above
issues and discuss a corresponding receiver.
II. BACKGROUND
The 3GPP initiated the discussion of NR SS and made the
following agreements.
∙ NR SSs include NR PSS and NR SSS to jointly carry
1008 cell IDs in total, double of that in LTE. The same
set of NR PSS/SSS sequences with OFDM modulation
and possibly different numerologies (e.g., different SCSs)
are adopted for all the NR frequency bands;
∙ NR SS is transmitted periodically with each period made
up of a number of SS blocks that may vary across
frequency bands. Each SS block spans four consectuive
OFDM symbols to carry NR PSS, NR physical broadcast
channel (PBCH), NR SSS and NR PBCH in order. The
same NR PSS/SSS are transmitted in different SS blocks
possibly with different beams to perform beam sweeping.
The SS block index (i.e., time location in a radio frame)
is indicated in NR PBCH and not in NR PSS/SSS;
∙ Both NR PSS and NR SSS span the same bandwidth of
12 physical resource blocks (PRBs), or equivalently 144
subcarriers without a specific DC subcarrier;
∙ The NR PSS sequence is constructed based on a
length-127 BPSK modulated m-sequence with gen-
erator polynomial 𝑥7 + 𝑥4 + 1 and initial state
[𝑥(6) 𝑥(5) 𝑥(4) 𝑥(3) 𝑥(2) 𝑥(1) 𝑥(0)] = [1 1 1 0 1 1 0].
The generated m-sequence is further cyclically shifted by
0, 43 and 86 steps, respectively, to obtain three NR PSS
sequences carrying the index of cell ID in a cell ID group,
(2)
i.e., 𝑁ID ∈ {0, 1, 2}. In the frequency domain, the NR
PSS sequence is mapped to the central 127 subcarriers
of 12 PRBs, leaving 8 and 9 subcarriers at the lower and
upper ends to serve as guard bands.
On the basis of the above agreements, the following criteria
should be considered when defining the NR SSS.
∙ Low cross-correlation with NR PSS: This is to avoid
the impact of NR SSS on the NR PSS detection, i.e., the
NR SSS should not generate a fake peak at the NR PSS
matched filter output, causing wrong NR PSS detection;
∙ Low auto-/cross-correlation among NR SSSs: This is
to guarantee a sufficiently low probability of wrong/ghost
cell ID detection from received NR SSS;
∙ Robustness against CFO: The NR SSS detection is
performed under coarse time/frequency synchronization
achieved via NR PSS detection. The remaining CFO at
this point may still be large relative to the SCS. Hence
the NR SSS should be robust enough against the CFO to
avoid performance degradation under non-zero CFOs;
∙ Low implementation complexity: The designed NR
SSS should have low computational complexities in both
generation and detection, so as to save power at both the
gNB (next generation node-B for 5G NR) and UE;
∙ Low peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR): The de-
signed NR SSS should have low PAPR to maximize the
transmission power efficiency.
In the next section, we will outline the details of the NR
SSS, which is partly based on our proposals from [3].
III. S ECONDARY S YNCHRONIZATION S IGNAL IN NR
A. General Consideration
Given that NR PSS and SSS occupy the same bandwidth
of 144 subcarriers, we adopt a same NR SSS sequence length
as that for NR PSS, i.e., 127. In the frequency domain, the
NR SSS sequence should occupy the same set of subcarriers
as NR PSS such that the same frequency filter can be shared
between NR PSS and SSS detectors. Furthermore, since there
are 1008 NR cell IDs and 3 NR PSSs, we need a set of 1008
NR SSS sequences that can be divided into 3 sub-sets, each
with 1008/3 = 336 NR SSS sequences associated to one of
the three NR PSS sequences. Specifically, the NR PSS carries
(2)
the index of cell ID in one cell ID group, i.e., 𝑁ID ∈ {0, 1, 2},
and the NR SSS carries the index of the cell ID group, i.e.,
(1)
𝑁ID ∈ {0, 1, ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ , 335}. The cell ID can then be expressed as
(1) (2)
𝑁ID = 3𝑁ID + 𝑁ID . (1)
Further considering that the total number of NR SSS sequences
(i.e., 1008) is significantly larger than the NR SSS sequence
length (i.e., 127), we propose to use Gold sequence [4],
which can generate a much larger number of mutually low-
correlated sequences than its sequence length. Mathematically,
the frequency domain NR SSS sequence is generated by
the multiplication of two BPSK modulated m-sequences with
cyclic shifts determined by the cell ID, i.e.,
𝑑SSS (𝑘)=[1−2𝑥0 ((𝑘+𝑚0 )mod127)]⋅[1−2𝑥1 ((𝑘+𝑚1 )mod127)]
(2)
where 𝑥0 (𝑘) and 𝑥1 (𝑘) (𝑘=0, 1, ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ , 126) are two length-127
(binary) m-sequences and 𝑚0 and 𝑚1 are their corresponding
cyclic shift values determined by the cell ID, 𝑁ID , in (1).
The remaining issues include the selection of the generator
polynomials for 𝑥0 (𝑘) and 𝑥1 (𝑘) in (2), denoted by 𝑔0 (𝑥) and
𝑔1 (𝑥), respectively, and the determination of the mapping rule
between the cyclic shift values, 𝑚0 and 𝑚1 , and the cell ID
(1) (2)
𝑁ID (or equivalently 𝑁ID and 𝑁ID ), as detailed below.
B. Selection of Generator Polynomials
To construct a set of Gold sequences, the generator poly-
nomials 𝑔0 (𝑥) and 𝑔1 (𝑥) need to be selected to generate a
preferred pair of m-sequences, between which the absolute
circular cross-correlation only takes three different values
 (2)
[4], i.e., 1, 2(𝑛+1)/2 − 1 = 15 or 2(𝑛+1)/2 + 1 = 17, with corresponding indexes, 𝑁ID . Then the UE determines an NR
𝑛=log2 (127+1)=7 being the highest order of 𝑔0 (𝑥) and 𝑔1 (𝑥). SSS sequence only from one sub-set of NR SSS sequences that
This guarantees that the absolute circular cross-correlation is associated to each detected NR PSS for retrieving the cell
(1)
between any two sequences in the generated Gold sequence ID group index, 𝑁ID . This involves computing and comparing
set also only take these three values, i.e., 1, 15, and 17. the inner-products between each of the 336 candidate NR
Recalling that the NR PSS is also based on m-sequence SSS sequences in the considered sub-set and the received
with the same length of 127, and that low cross-correlation frequency-domain signal sequence that is expected to contain
should be guaranteed between NR PSS and NR SSS, we first the transmitted NR SSS. A straightforward way is to calculate
select one generator polynomial of the two, e.g., 𝑔0 (𝑥), to be this inner-product 336 times, one for each candidate NR SSS
the same as that for generating NR PSS, i.e., sequence. This totally requires about 336×(127−1) additions.
A more efficient approach is to adopt the fast Walsh-
𝑔0 (𝑥) = 𝑥7 + 𝑥4 + 1. (3)
Hadamard transform (FWHT) [5] based on the property of
This allows the sharing of the same generator circuit between m-sequence. Specifically, the UE first tries to remove the effect
that for generating NR PSS and NR SSS at the gNB/UE. More of one m-sequence, e.g., 𝑥0 (𝑘), from the received frequency-
importantly, by selecting one generator polynomial as in (3), domain signal sequence by element-wisely multiplying it
we can guarantee that both the NR PSS and NR SSS sequences with the BPSK modulated 𝑥0 (𝑘) with a certain cyclic shift.
are in the same set of Gold sequences, such that their cross- Provided that the hypothesis on the cyclic shift of 𝑥0 (𝑘), 𝑚0 ,
correlation can be kept low, i.e., only taking three different is correct, the remaining received frequency-domain signal
values of 1, 15 or 17 as aforementioned, and in turn their sequence will only contain the other BPSK modulated m-
time-domain correlation can be expected to be low as well. sequence, e.g., 𝑥1 (𝑘), with an unknown cyclic shift, 𝑚1 . Then
Given 𝑔0 (𝑥) in (3) and following the definition of Gold se- FWHT operation can be performed to calculate the inner prod-
quences [4], we can verify that the other generator polynomial, ucts between the remaining received frequency-domain signal
i.e., 𝑔1 (𝑥), can only be selected from the set in (4) to make sequence and all the 127 cyclically-shifted versions of 𝑥1 (𝑘)
sure a preferred pair of m-sequences are generated. in an efficient way, which involves about 127 × log2 (127 + 1)
⎧ 7 additions [5]. Accordingly, the FHWT-based NR SSS detection
 𝑥 + 𝑥 + 1,

 totally involves about 𝐶 ×127×log2 (127+1) additions, where

 𝑥7 + 𝑥5 + 𝑥3 + 𝑥 + 1,

 𝐶 is the number of hypotheses on the cyclic shift of 𝑥0 (𝑘)




 𝑥7 + 𝑥5 + 𝑥4 + 𝑥3 + 1, that need to be checked given each detected NR PSS. Thus to




 𝑥7 + 𝑥6 + 1, minimize the NR SSS detection complexity, we should keep

⎨ 𝑥7 + 𝑥6 + 𝑥3 + 𝑥 + 1, 𝐶, the number of hypotheses on the cyclic shift for 𝑥0 (𝑘), to
𝑔1 (𝑥) = (4) be as small as possible. Recall that on one hand, a length-127


 𝑥7 + 𝑥6 + 𝑥4 + 𝑥2 + 1, m-sequence can have at most 127 different cyclically shifted




 𝑥7 + 𝑥6 + 𝑥5 + 𝑥2 + 1, versions, and that on the other hand, there are 336 NR SSS




 𝑥7 + 𝑥6 + 𝑥5 + 𝑥4 + 1, sequences associated to each NR PSS, each of which should

 7 6 5 4 2 be assigned with a unique cyclic shift pair (𝑚0 , 𝑚1 ). We can

 𝑥 + 𝑥 + 𝑥 + 𝑥 + 𝑥 + 𝑥 + 1,

⎩ 7 derive that 𝐶 is lower bounded by
𝑥 + 𝑥6 + 𝑥5 + 𝑥4 + 𝑥3 + 𝑥2 + 1.
Note that for the same mapping between the cyclic shifts 𝐶 ≥ ⌈336/127⌉ = 3 (5)
and cell ID, the selection of 𝑔1 (𝑥) in (4) does not affect where ⌈⋅⌉ is the ceiling operator. Therefore, to minimize the
the auto-/cross-correlation among NR SSS sequences and the NR SSS detection complexity, the 336 NR SSS sequences
cross-correlation between the NR SSS sequences and NR associated to each NR PSS should only assume 𝐶 = 3
PSS sequences, as they all lead to a set of Gold sequences. different values of 𝑚0 . Accordingly, the avearge number of
However, the selection of 𝑔1 (𝑥) needs to take into account the NR SSS sequences with the same value of 𝑚0 is 336/3 = 112.
implementation complexity and the PAPR of NR SSSs. If dif- Thus a balanced mapping between 𝑚1 and the group cell ID,
ferent selections of 𝑔1 (𝑥) lead to similar PAPR, those with the (1)
𝑁ID , can be given by
fewest number of additive items, e.g., 𝑥7 +𝑥+1 and 𝑥7 +𝑥6 +1
(1)
both having only three additive items, are preferable, as they 𝑚1 = 𝑁ID mod112, (6)
involve the minimum number of modulo-two additions when
generating the corresponding m-sequences. and the mapping function of 𝑚0 should be of the form
(1) (2)
C. Design of Mapping between Cyclic Shifts and Cell ID 𝑚0 = 𝑓 (⌊𝑁ID /112⌋, 𝑁ID ) (7)
Now we consider the mapping between the cyclic shifts, where ⌊⋅⌋ is the floor operator, and the function 𝑓 (⋅, ⋅) is yet
(1)
𝑚0 and 𝑚1 , and the cell ID, 𝑁ID (or equivalently 𝑁ID and to be determined.
(2)
𝑁ID ). The first factor one should consider here is detection Finding a proper expression for (7) should take into account
complexity. In practice, the NR SSS detection is done after the robustness of the NR SSSs against CFO. As we know,
UE has detected one or several valid NR PSSs and their the remaining CFO after NR PSS detection may be relatively
large compared to the adopted SCS denoted by Δ𝑓 . Thus m0

one should avoid high cross correlation between any two NR 17

SSS sequences under practical CFO values (e.g., up to 1 or 2 (2)
N ID = 2 16

times of Δ𝑓 ). In our Gold sequence based NR SSS, two NR 15

(2)
N ID = 1 14
SSS sequences may be highly correlated if they are cyclically 13
shifted versions of each other with a small cyclic shift gap. For (2)
N ID = 0 12

example, if one NR SSS sequence with cyclic shifts (𝑚0 , 𝑚1 ) 11

(2)
10
is obtainable by cyclically shifting another NR SSS sequence N ID = 2
′ ′ ′ 9
with cyclic shifts (𝑚0 , 𝑚1 ) by only one step, e.g., 𝑚0 = 𝑚0+1 (2)
N ID = 1 8
′
and 𝑚1 = 𝑚1 +1, the reception of the first NR SSS sequences 7

under a CFO of Δ𝑓 /2 could be possibly detected as the second

(2)
N ID = 0 6
5
NR SSS under a CFO of −Δ𝑓 /2, i.e., a wrong NR SSS (and (2)
N ID = 2 4

in turn a wrong cell ID) is detected in this case. 3

(2)
To avoid the above-mentioned event, the following princi- N ID = 1 2
1
ples should be adopted. (2)
N ID = 0
m1
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
∙ Among all NR SSS sequence pairs being cyclically shifted Selected cyclic shift pair Un-selected cyclic shift pair

versions of each other, those with the minimum cyclic

shift difference should be associated to different NR PSS
sequences. This principle to a certain extent allows more
freedom for the selection of the function 𝑓 (⋅, ⋅) in (7), as
even though two NR SSS sequences are cyclically shifted
versions of each other with a small cyclic shift difference,
they are associated to different NR PSS sequences and
will not be detected at the same time. Thus they will not
cause misdetection at the NR SSS detector output.
∙ Among those NR SSS sequence pairs being cyclically
shifted versions of each other which are associated to
the same NR PSS sequence, their cyclic shift differ-
ences should be sufficiently large. This principle directly
guarantees low cross correlations between two NR SSS
sequences associated to the same NR PSS sequence even
under a practical value of non-zero CFO.
Accordingly, we propose the function 𝑓 (⋅, ⋅) in (7) as
(1) (2)
𝑚0 = 𝑔 ⋅ (3⌊𝑁ID /112⌋ + 𝑁ID ), (8)
(1) (2)
where the expression (3⌊𝑁ID /112⌋ + 𝑁ID ) follows the first
principle in that the feasible values of 𝑚0 associated to one NR
PSS sequence are interleaved with those associated to the other
two NR PSS sequences; and 𝑔 is a positive integer that can
take a proper value to satisfy the second principle. To facilitate
the understanding of the proposed mapping in (6) and (8), an
illustrative example of the feasible cyclic shift pairs (𝑚0 , 𝑚1 )
are plotted in Fig. 1 with 𝑔 = 2.
In 3GPP RAN1 NR AH2 meeting [6], the above NR SSS
design including (2), (3), (6) and (8) with 𝑔 = 5 are adopted,
where 𝑔 = 5 results in sufficient large cyclic shift gaps
between cyclically shifted NR SSS sequences to combat CFO.
Based on the mapping design (6) and (8) with 𝑔 = 5 and
further considering the implementation complexity as well as
PAPR, the generator polynomial of the second m-sequence
should be selected from (4) as
𝑔1 (𝑥) = 𝑥7 + 𝑥 + 1, (9)
with which the maximum PAPR of the resultant NR SSS is
only 9.64dB. As a comparison, the other options in (4) could
lead to a maximum PAPR value of up to 12.4 dB.
Fig. 1. Illustration of the mapping between cyclic shift values (𝑚0 , 𝑚1 ) and
(1) (2)
cell ID (𝑁ID , 𝑁ID ) using equations (6) and (8) with 𝑔 = 2, where the
(1)
value of 𝑁ID is not maked on the figure for simplicity.
In summary, the NR SSS sequence 𝑑SSS (𝑛) is defined as
𝑑SSS (𝑘)=[1−2𝑥0 ((𝑘+𝑚0 )mod127)]⋅[1−2𝑥1 ((𝑘+𝑚1 )mod127)]
(1) (2)
𝑚0 = 15⌊𝑁ID /112⌋ + 5𝑁ID
(1)
𝑚1 = 𝑁ID mod112
0 ≤ 𝑛 < 127
where
𝑥0 (𝑖 + 7) = (𝑥0 (𝑖 + 4) + 𝑥0 (𝑖))mod2
𝑥1 (𝑖 + 7) = (𝑥1 (𝑖 + 1) + 𝑥1 (𝑖))mod2
[𝑥0 (6) 𝑥0 (5) 𝑥0 (4) 𝑥0 (3) 𝑥0 (2) 𝑥0 (1) 𝑥0 (0)]=[0 0 0 0 0 0 1]
[𝑥1 (6) 𝑥1 (5) 𝑥1 (4) 𝑥1 (3) 𝑥1 (2) 𝑥1 (1) 𝑥1 (0)]=[0 0 0 0 0 0 1],
which has been included in the NR technical specification [7].
IV. P ERFORMANCE E VALUATION
A. Simulation Setting
We consider a 3-TRP (Transmission Reception Point) sys-
tem with 4 GHz carrier frequency and 15 kHz SCS. Each TRP
transmits only one SS block containing NR PSS and NR SSS
in an SS period of 20 ms. The FFT size is set at 256 for both
the proposed NR SS and the LTE SS which is included for
reference. The frame structure is similar to that for LTE, i.e.,
in one SS period (20 ms), there are 40 slots with duration 0.5
ms, each containing 7 OFDM symbols. With 256-point FFT,
the cyclic prefix (CP) length is 20 samples for the first OFDM
symbol and 18 samples for the remaining 6 OFDM symbols
in each slot. For OFDM symbols not occupied by PSS/SSS,
their frequency domain sequences are generated by allocating
random QPSK symbols on each subcarrier.
To evaluate the NR SS performance, here we consider a
worst system setting, where at the UE side, the received power
ratio from the three TRPs is set at 1 : 1 : 1, and the signal 1
arrival time differences of the other two TRPs relative to
the first TRP are uniformly distributed within [−3, 3]𝜇s (i.e., 0.9

Cell ID Detection Probability

[−12, 12] samples). The channel between each TRP and the
UE is generated following the CDL-C channel model in [8] 0.8

with 100 ns delay scaling. Two UE speeds, i.e., 3 and 120

0.7
km/h are considered. Each TRP transmits a pair of PSS and LTE SS, 3 km/h, Diff. PSS
LTE SS, 3 km/h, Same PSS
SSS sequences carrying a unique cell ID. Their transmitted 0.6
LTE SS, 120 km/h, Diff. PSS
LTE SS, 120 km/h, Same PSS
PSS sequences can be either the same or different (marked NR SS, 3 km/h, Diff. PSS
NR SS, 3 km/h, Same PSS
as “Diff. PSS” and “Same PSS” in the figures, respectively). 0.5
NR SS, 120 km/h, Diff. PSS
NR SS, 120 km/h, Same PSS
We will here evaluate both the initial acquisition case, where
-12 -10 -8 -6 -4 -2 0
the UE is only required to detect one cell ID, and the non- SNR (dB)
initial acquisition case, where the UE is required to detect three (a)
different cell IDs. Focusing on the NR SS performance, we do
100
not include transmit/receive beamforming effect by assuming LTE SS, 3 km/h, Diff. PSS
LTE SS, 3 km/h, Same PSS
a single dual polarized antenna at both the UE and each TRP.

Cell ID False Detection Probability

LTE SS, 120 km/h, Diff. PSS
LTE SS, 120 km/h, Same PSS
10-1 NR SS, 3 km/h, Diff. PSS
NR SS, 3 km/h, Same PSS
B. Detection Method NR SS, 120 km/h, Diff. PSS
NR SS, 120 km/h, Same PSS

At the UE, we propose to use the following double-threshold 10-2

detection method for initial access.

PSS detection: The PSS is first detected by a matched filter
of length 𝑁 = 256 in the time domain via sliding window
over 20 ms. A first threshold is adopted here and selected
to guarantee a false alarm probability (FAP) of no higher
than 0.01. Multiple CFO hypothesis testing (e.g., 3) and 2-
segment partial correlation (i.e., correlations between the PSS
and received signal are calculated separately for the first and
second 128 samples and then non-coherently combined) are
applied if the initial CFO is large. A hypothesis of time delay,
CFO and PSS index is claimed to be detected if the related
correlation output power is larger than the first threshold. After
PSS detection, at most 9 detected hypotheses with the highest
correlation output power are stored, and CFO estimation is
performed under each hypothesis via the method in [9].
SSS detection: Given each hypothesis that passes the PSS
detection, the SSS is then detected in the frequency domain
via correlation (e.g., using FWHT) between all the candidate
SSS sequences associated to the detected PSS sequence and
the frequency domain received signal sequence. A second
threshold is further adopted here to reject unreliable SSS
detection outputs, which is selected such that the FAP of SSS
detection is no higher than a certain value (e.g., 0.01 in Fig.
2 and 3). For each hypothesis that passes the PSS detection,
at most 3 candidate SSS sequences that lead to a normalized
correlation power higher than the second threshold are claimed
to pass the SSS detection. Thus at most 9 × 3 = 27 pairs of
PSS and SSS sequences will be stored after SSS detection.
Cell ID selection: Among up to 27 PSS/SSS sequence
pairs detected in the above two steps, at most 1 (in the
initial acquisition case) or 3 (in the non-initial acquisition
case) unique PSS/SSS pairs with the highest normalized SSS
correlation outputs are selected. The corresponding cell ID(s)
is (are) claimed as the detected cell ID(s).
In our subsequent simulations, the following one-shot per-
formance metrics will be evaluated.
10-3
-12 -10 -8 -6 -4 -2 0
SNR (dB)
(b)
Fig. 2. The cell ID detection (a) and false detection performance (b) of LTE
SS and NR SS in the initial acquisition case of a 3-TRP system with the
same/different PSS per TRP and different UE speeds marked on the figures.
∙ Cell ID detection probability:The probability that one cell
ID (in the initial acquisition case) or all the three cell
IDs (in the non-initial acquisition case) transmitted by
the TRPs are successfully detected, and the corresponding
residual time offset is within half CP length;
∙ Cell ID false-detection probability: The probability that
a detected cell ID is not transmitted by any TRP.
These two measures are controllable and can be traded-off by
adjusting the thresholds during the NR-PSS/SSS detection.
C. Numerical Results
Initial acquisition case: In this case, the initial CFOs at the
TRP and UE are uniformly distributed within [−0.05, 0.05]
ppm and [−5, 5] ppm, respectively. The corresponding maxi-
mum CFO is about 20 kHz, or equivalently 1.35 SCS. Since
this value is relatively large, we adopt 3 CFO hypotheses (i.e.,
0 and +/ − 1.0 of the SCS) and 2-segment partial correlation
in PSS detection. Fig. 2 shows that, in the initial acquisition
case, the NR SS and LTE SS perform almost the same in terms
of both cell ID detection proability and cell ID false detection
probability. They both provide sufficiently low cell ID false
detection probabilities even under large frequency offsets.
Non-initial acquisition case: In this case, the initial CFO at
the UE and TRP are uniformly distributed within [−0.05, 0.05]
ppm and [−0.1, 0.1] ppm, respectively. The maximum CFO
 1 0.85

0.9
0.8

Cell ID Detection Probability

Cell ID Detection Probability
0.8
NR SS
0.75
0.7

0.6 0.7 FAP SSS = 100

LTE SS, 3 km/h, Diff. PSS
FAP SSS = 10-1
0.5 LTE SS, 3 km/h, Same PSS
LTE SS, 120 km/h, Diff. PSS 0.65 FAP SSS = 10-2
LTE SS, 120 km/h, Same PSS
0.4 FAP SSS = 10-3
NR SS, 3 km/h, Diff. PSS
0.6 LTE SS
NR SS, 3 km/h, Same PSS FAP SSS = 10-4
0.3 NR SS, 120 km/h, Diff. PSS
FAP SSS = 10-5
NR SS, 120 km/h, Same PSS
0.2 0.55
-12 -10 -8 -6 -4 -2 0 10-4 10-3 10-2 10-1 100
SNR (dB) Cell ID False Detection Probability

(a)
Fig. 4. The cell ID detection performance of LTE SS and NR SS in the non-
100 initial acquisition case with SNR = -6 dB, 3 km/h UE speed and different
target FAPs in the SSS detection.
Cell ID False Detection Probability

10-1

10-2
10-3
10-4
-12 -10 -8
SNR (dB)
(b)
Fig. 3. The cell ID detection (a) and false detection performance (b) of LTE
SS and NR SS in the non-initial acquisition case of a 3-TRP system with the
same/different PSS per TRP and different UE speeds marked on the figures.
is only about 1 kHz, much less than one SCS. Hence there
is no need to consider multiple CFO hypotheses or partial
correlation in PSS detection. In addition, at low SNR, it is
unnecessary to perform CFO estimation after PSS detection,
as due to the noise effect, the residual CFO after estimation
may be even larger than the original one. Fig. 3 shows that,
in the non-initial acquisition case, the NR SS significantly
outperfoms the LTE SS. This is because the LTE SSS has
much worse cross-correlation property than the NR SSS,
which is more critical when detecting multiple cell IDs.
Consequently, the cell ID false detection probability of LTE
SS is high, which in turn decreases the cell ID detection
probability. Comparatively, the NR SSS is contructed such that
any two SSS sequences have nearly optimal cross-correlation
performance according to the property of Gold sequences.
Through proper mapping design between the cyclic shifts and
cell IDs, their cross-correlation is still kept low even when
there is non-zero CFO. Hence the NR SS achieves a much
lower cell ID false detection probability than LTE SS.
In Fig. 4, we plot the cell ID detection probability versus
the false detection probability in the non-initial acquisition
case when the SSS detection threshold is set according to
different target SSS FAPs. The PSS detection threshold is set
to guarantee 1% FAP. The scenario of three TRPs transmitting
different PSS is considered at a fixed SNR of -6 dB. It is
LTE SS, 3 km/h, Diff. PSS
LTE SS, 3 km/h, Same PSS
LTE SS, 120 km/h, Diff. PSS
LTE SS, 120 km/h, Same PSS
NR SS, 3 km/h, Diff. PSS
NR SS, 3 km/h, Same PSS
NR SS, 120 km/h, Diff PSS
NR SS, 120 km/h, Same PSS
-6 -4 -2
seen from Fig. 4 that, given any target SSS FAP, the NR SS
always performs better than LTE SS, achieving a higher cell
ID detection probability with a lower cell ID false detection
probability. It is also seen that for both LTE SS and NR
SS, a lower target SSS FAP can preferably decrease the cell
ID false detection probability, but also decrease the cell ID
detection probability. Hence in practice, with the proposed NR
0
SS detection algorithm, a trade-off can be achieved between
the cell ID detection probability and cell ID false detection
probability via tuning the SSS detection threshold.
V. C ONCLUSIONS
In this paper, we have provided the background and tech-
nical details of the NR SSS with careful parameter selections
considering performance, complexity, PAPR, etc. Simulation
results show that the NR SSS significantly outperforms LTE
SSS when the UE needs to detect multiple cell IDs. Our
proposed NR SSS has been included in 3GPP technical
specification [7].
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