The present invention provides a method of operating a base station transmitter. The method includes providing a cellular downlink synchronization signal having a primary portion and a secondary portion, wherein the primary portion employs a respective one of a plurality of different primary signals allocated to adjacent transmitting cells. The method also includes further providing cell-specific information in the secondary portion and transmitting a cellular downlink synchronization signal. In one embodiment, the primary portion explicitly indicates the partial cell identity information and the remaining cell identity information is carried in the secondary portion. In another embodiment, the plurality of different primary signals are used only to avoid channel mismatch effects. The invention also provides a method of operating a user equipment. The method includes receiving a cellular downlink synchronization signal having a primary portion and a secondary portion, wherein timing acquisition is performed via the primary portion in conjunction with primary synchronization sequence index detection. In addition, the secondary portion provides cell-specific parameters and identifies and extracts the secondary portion.