Disclosed herein are apparatus, methods and computer program products for performing cell acquisition and pilot sequence detection in a cellular telecommunications system such as, for example, an OFDM system. In the apparatus, methods and computer program products, a primary synchronization channel sequence and a secondary synchronization channel sequence are transmitted by a base station in a sub-frame of an OFDM downlink frame. In one embodiment, the primary synchronization channel sequence, secondary synchronization channel sequence, and system information are mapped to a plurality of sub-carriers in an FDM signal. At the user equipment, coarse synchronization is performed during cell acquisition by performing a cross correlation between the signal and a reference primary synchronization channel sequence stored in a memory of the user equipment. The coarse synchronization performed using the primary synchronization channel sequence is improved by performing a cross correlation between the signal and a reference secondary synchronization channel sequence stored in a memory of the user equipment. Identification of a pilot sequence for channel estimation purposes is performed by detecting two cyclically invariant pairs of secondary synchronization channel sequences over two consecutive frames of the signal. The cyclically invariant pair of secondary synchronization channel sequences are selected from a set of orthogonal sequences and identify a particular pilot sequence incorporated in the signal.