In LTE (within a carrier) all cells typically use same frequency. PSS and SSS are probably what you call the beacon signals. The sequencies are standardized, so the UE knows what sequencies to try for correlation. Please note that this doesn’t yet require any kind of decoding. When UE has determined the PSS and SSS sequencies giving the strongest correlations, it can calculate Cell ID. With cell Cell ID the UE knows where the Reference Symbols are located, and can receive and decode MIB and so on. MIB is the first “real” message to be decoded.
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