as shown by pn 0 and pn 4 all gated pilot signals having the same symbol sequence regardless of phase shift can be grouped together into sets known as a coset as follows where the number of cosets can be defined as the number of pn code phase offsets divided by the number of pilot signal bursts per period when searching for the pilot signal bursts from one coset the pilot signal bursts from the other cosets will not be seen in other communications systems the length of the pn code for spreading the pilot signal may vary depending on a variety of factors a short pn code facilitates faster acquisition time whereas a long pn code increases code processing gain those skilled in the art will be readily able to assess the performance tradeoffs to determine the optimal length for the pn code in addition the number of phase offsets spacings and pilot bursts per period can be varied t o optimize system parameters in an exemplary embodiment pilots which are separated by multiples of the gated pilot period such as every 16 1024 64 pn offsets will appear to have identical pilot bursts although shifted in time table 1 shows all the possible 512 pn offsets divided into 16 different cosets to have a larger separation in the pn space for adjacent base stations it is likely that the network operators would prefer using higher pn increments to lower pn increments some cdma network operators that prefer using a pn increment of four for most networks may occasionally switch to a pn increment of two or one for densely populated networks thus searching cosets in decreasing order of pn increment may result in a reduction in acquisition time in an exemplary embodiment four cosets are gathered.