Adaptive selection of signal detection modes

The name of the invention is adaptive selection of signal detection modes. A wireless device detects a synchronization signal by obtaining (210) a sequence of samples from a received signal and calculating (220) a differential decoding sequence from the obtained sequence of samples. The wireless device correlates (230) the calculated differential decoding sequence with a first reference sequence corresponding to the synchronization signal with each of a plurality of time offsets and identifies which of the plurality of time offsets results in a maximum correlation result. In response to determining (240) that the maximum correlation result does not meet the predetermined reliability criteria, the wireless device correlates (250) the obtained sample sequence with a second reference sequence with each of a plurality of time and frequency offsets, and identifies which combination of the time offset and the frequency offset results in the maximum correlation result. The first reference sequence includes a differe