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Abstract—We propose a secondary synchronization signal a sufficiently high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at the UE.
(SSS) for the fifth generation (5G) New Radio (NR) communica- While at high frequencies, beam-formed SS transmission with
tion systems, which is based on the element-wise multiplication beam sweeping is needed to compensate for the increased
of two BPSK modulated m-sequences with different cyclic shifts
encoding the physical cell identity (ID) carried by the NR SSS. propagation loss and guarantee coverage. Hence a unified
We present the details on the generator polynomial selection for NR SS compatible to both omni-directional and directional
the involved m-sequences and the mapping between their cyclic transmissions and adaptable to different frequency bands is
shift values and the cell ID. We also propose a double-threshold required. Moreover, accumulated SS detection over multiple
detection method which is able to mitigate false cell ID detection. time slots may be infeasible due to beam sweeping. Thus good
Simulation results are provided to demonstrate the superiority of
the proposed NR SSS over the LTE SSS. The proposed NR SSS one-shot NR SS detection performance should be guaranteed.
has been included in 3GPP Release 15 technical specification. Multiple numerologies: Due to different channel proper-
Index Terms—The fifth generation (5G); New Radio (NR); ties (e.g., propagation loss, delay spread, Doppler shift, etc.)
Secondary Synchronization Signal (SSS); m-sequence. across frequency bands and various applications with different
quality-of-service (QoS) requirements, NR SSs need to be
I. I NTRODUCTION transmitted with different numerologies, i.e., 15, 30, 120 and
It has been widely believed that [1] various wireless appli- 240 kHz subcarrier spacings (SCSs) with proportional cyclic
cations will emerge and spread to every aspect of our daily life prefix (CP) lengths, in different frequency bands, or even
in the near future. To name a few, unmanned vehicles, virtual multiple numerologies in the same frequency band. Thus a
reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) and smart home/cities unified NR SS adaptive to different numerologies is required.
are urgently desired in the upcoming decades. To cater for Time-frequency ambiguity: The LTE PSS based on
this ever increasing demand, the fifth generation (5G) wireless Zadoff-Chu (ZC) sequences has a time-frequency ambiguity
communication needs to support manifold requirements, in- problem, i.e., the time-frequency auto-correlation of each LTE
cluding higher mobility, massive access, higher data rates, and PSS contains several significant side lobes besides the main
lower latency. The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) lobe at zero time delay and zero carrier frequency offset
has launched the standardization activity for the first phase 5G (CFO). This implies that the UE may likely synchronize to the
system named New Radio (NR) towards this goal. eNB via the PSS detection at a non-zero time delay and CFO
Like most Long Term Evolution (LTE) and LTE-Advanced hypothesis, leading to wrong time-frequency synchronization
(LTE-A) based wireless systems, initial access is the first and and degraded SSS detection performance (the SSS may even
fundamental step in 5G NR for a user equipment (UE) to become undetectable under large time/frequency errors). Such
acquire time-frequency synchronization with a cell and detect an ambiguity problem should be avoided in NR SS.
its physical layer identity (ID). Otherwise the communication High cross-correlation among LTE SSS sequences: The
link between the UE and network cannot be established. LTE SSS is based on the interleaved concatenation of two
In LTE/LTE-A based systems, this is achieved by the UE m-sequences with different cyclic shifts. The related mapping
detecting a pair of primary/secondary synchronization signals between their cyclic shifts and cell ID leads to the existence of
(PSS/SSS) transmitted by an eNodeB nearby [2]. Evolved many LTE SSS sequence pairs, for both of which one of the
from LTE/LTE-A, 5G NR is expected to also have synchro- two m-sequences has the same cyclic shift. The normalized
nization signals (SSs) undertaking similar functions as LTE cross-correlation between such a pair of LTE SSS sequences
PSS/SSS. However, the NR SS faces several new challenges. can be as high as 0.5, causing a high probability of wrong
Wider bandwidth and higher carrier frequency: To solve SSS detection, especially when the SNR is low. Hence, NR
spectrum shortage, 5G NR aims at both re-farming the current should consider different SSS sequence design.
microwave frequency bands below 3 GHz and exploring the Ghost cell ID detection: The LTE SSS detection is usually
higher millimeter wave frequency bands up to 52.6 GHz. Thus done based on its concatenation structure, i.e., by separately
the supported carrier frequency of NR could be much higher detecting the cyclic shifts of the two m-sequences, which then
than that of LTE, and a wider SS bandwidth is available to jointly determine the cell ID carried by the LTE SSS. However,
provide finer time resolution. when a UE lies on the border of two cells and simultaneously
Support of beamforming: The channel propagation loss receives LTE SSSs from both cells, it may detect one m-
increases with the carrier frequency. At low frequencies, sequence from one cell and another m-sequence from another
omni-directional SS transmission may be enough to provide cell, creating an SSS sequence with a ghost cell ID not being
0.9
0.8
(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
seen from Fig. 4 that, given any target SSS FAP, the NR SS
10-2
always performs better than LTE SS, achieving a higher cell
10-3
LTE SS, 3 km/h, Diff. PSS ID detection probability with a lower cell ID false detection
LTE SS, 3 km/h, Same PSS
LTE SS, 120 km/h, Diff. PSS probability. It is also seen that for both LTE SS and NR
LTE SS, 120 km/h, Same PSS
10-4
NR SS, 3 km/h, Diff. PSS SS, a lower target SSS FAP can preferably decrease the cell
NR SS, 3 km/h, Same PSS
NR SS, 120 km/h, Diff PSS ID false detection probability, but also decrease the cell ID
NR SS, 120 km/h, Same PSS
detection probability. Hence in practice, with the proposed NR
-12 -10 -8 -6 -4 -2 0
SNR (dB)
SS detection algorithm, a trade-off can be achieved between
(b) the cell ID detection probability and cell ID false detection
probability via tuning the SSS detection threshold.
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 V. C ONCLUSIONS
same/different PSS per TRP and different UE speeds marked on the figures.
In this paper, we have provided the background and tech-
nical details of the NR SSS with careful parameter selections
is only about 1 kHz, much less than one SCS. Hence there considering performance, complexity, PAPR, etc. Simulation
is no need to consider multiple CFO hypotheses or partial results show that the NR SSS significantly outperforms LTE
correlation in PSS detection. In addition, at low SNR, it is SSS when the UE needs to detect multiple cell IDs. Our
unnecessary to perform CFO estimation after PSS detection, proposed NR SSS has been included in 3GPP technical
as due to the noise effect, the residual CFO after estimation specification [7].
may be even larger than the original one. Fig. 3 shows that, R EFERENCES
in the non-initial acquisition case, the NR SS significantly
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outperfoms the LTE SS. This is because the LTE SSS has Radio: waveform, frame structure, multiple access, and initial access,”
much worse cross-correlation property than the NR SSS, IEEE Commun. Mag., vol. 55, no. 6, pp. 64-71, June 2017.
which is more critical when detecting multiple cell IDs. [2] S. Sesia, I. Toufik, and M. Baker, LTE the UMTS Long Term Evolution,
from Theory to Practice, 2nd Ed., John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2011.
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SS is high, which in turn decreases the cell ID detection tion signals (R1-1708160)”, 3GPP RAN1#89 meeting,
probability. Comparatively, the NR SSS is contructed such that Hangzhou, China, 15th-19th May, 2017. Available at
http://www.3gpp.org/ftp/tsg ran/WG1 RL1/TSGR1 89/Docs/
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performance according to the property of Gold sequences. correlation functions (Corresp.),” IEEE. Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 14,
Through proper mapping design between the cyclic shifts and no. 1, pp. 154-156, Jan. 1968.
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there is non-zero CFO. Hence the NR SS achieves a much [6] Minutes Report of 3GPP RAN1 NR AH2 Meeting, available at http://
lower cell ID false detection probability than LTE SS. www.3gpp.org/ftp/tsg ran/WG1 RL1/TSGR1 AH/NR AH 1706/Report/.
[7] 3GPP Technical Specification 38.211 v1.0.0, September 2017, available
In Fig. 4, we plot the cell ID detection probability versus at http://www.3gpp.org/ftp/specs/archive/38 series/38.211/.
the false detection probability in the non-initial acquisition [8] 3GPP Technical Report 38.900 v14.3.1, July 2017, available at
case when the SSS detection threshold is set according to http://www.3gpp.org/ftp/specs/archive/38 series/38.900/.
[9] S. Huang, Y. Su, Y. He, and S. Tang, “Joint time and frequency offset
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different PSS is considered at a fixed SNR of -6 dB. It is