Techniques for facilitating cell search by user equipments (UEs) in a wireless communication system are described. In an aspect, a primary synchronization code (PSC) sequence may be generated based on a Frank sequence and a constant amplitude sequence that is repeated multiple times. In another aspect, a set of PSC sequences may be generated based on complementary sequences having good aperiodic correlation properties and efficient implementations. In one design, PSC sequences A+B and B+A may be formed based on Golay complementary sequences A and B, there “+” denotes concatenation. In yet another aspect, a set of secondary synchronization code (SSC) sequences may be generated based on a set of base sequences and different modulation symbols of a modulation scheme. Each base sequence may be modulated by each of M possible modulation symbols for the modulation scheme to obtain M different SSC sequences.