Cell search method in OFDM cellular system, frame transmission method thereof, and forward link frame structure thereof

A cell search method used by a terminal to search a target cell using reception signals received from a plurality of base stations, each base station transmitting a frame of its cell, in an Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (OFDM) cellular system comprising a plurality of cells to which a cell-specific scrambling code is assigned, wherein the terminal includes a cell search unit having data detectors, and the cell search method comprises:

• detecting, by a data detector of the cell search unit, a hopping pattern of the target cell using reception sync channel symbols, which are signals corresponding to sync channel symbol positions of the reception signals, wherein the frame of each cell comprises M sync channel symbols code-hopped according to a hopping pattern of the cell, where M is a natural number equal to or greater than 2, each hopping pattern containing M sync channel code sequences and respectively corresponding to each code group to which a scrambling code of each cell belongs, and an arbitrary hopping pattern used in the OFDM cellular system differs from a cyclically shifted result of the hopping pattern, other hopping patterns, or cyclically shifted results of the other hopping patterns;
• and
• detecting, by a data detector of the cell search unit, a code group of the target cell based on the detected hopping pattern,
• wherein the frame of each cell is made up of M sync slots having the same time duration, and each sync channel symbol is located at the same position in each sync slot.