Wireless communications systems are widely deployed to provide various types of communication content such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, and so on. These systems may be multiple-access systems capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing the available system resources (e.g., time, frequency, and power). Examples of such multiple-access systems include code-division multiple access (CDMA) systems, time-division multiple access (TDMA) systems, frequency-division multiple access (FDMA) systems, 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE) systems, and orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) systems.
Generally, a wireless multiple-access communications system may include a number of base stations, each simultaneously supporting communication for multiple mobile terminals. Base stations may communicate with user equipment on downstream and upstream links. Each base station has a coverage range, which may be referred to as the coverage area of the cell. Some wireless multiple-access communications systems may utilize carrier aggregation, where multiple component carriers are aggregated and used together for transmission between base stations and user equipment. To achieve proper timing for transmission and reception on these different carriers, timing advance information may be distributed from base station to a user equipment to allow the device to account for propagation delay and/or delay due to other factors (e.g., repeaters) on different carriers. Timing advance information can help ensure synchronized reception timing of the uplink stream links transmitted from multiple mobile terminals. The multiple component carriers may be aggregated into different timing advance groups. In some cases, the multiple component carriers may be aggregated into different timing advance groups based on having similar delay characteristics. Synchronization issues, however, may arise for timing advance groups depending on the nature of the component carriers within a given timing advance group.