Accelerating 5G Synchronization Signal Timing Offset Estimation Using Dual-Rate Sampling

Cell search engineers face significant challenge in reducing computation time to meet the requirements for fast initial access and radio link recovery. Since the majority of cell search time is consumed by Primary Synchronization Signal (PSS) detection, reducing the computational burden of this step is critical for shortening the overall procedure. This paper proposes a novel timing offset estimation scheme designed to accelerate 5G cell search. Leveraging the 5G Synchronization Signal Block (SSB) structure, the proposed scheme employs a two-step estimation process using dual-rate sampling. This approach effectively reduces the PSS detection search space without compromising the performance of subsequent processes. Performance evaluations in practical system and channel environments demonstrate that the proposed scheme reduces the cell search procedure time by 68\% compared to the baseline, while maintaining Physical Broadcast CHannel (PBCH) decoding performance.