The present invention relates to the field of wireless communications technologies. In a receiving device, a receiving module receives a synchronization signal including a first signal and a second signal. The first signal includes N1 generalized ZC sequences, and the second signal includes N2 generalized ZC sequences. The second signal is used to distinguish different cells or different cell groups. There are at least two generalized ZC sequences with different root indexes in (N1+N2) generalized ZC sequences. A processing module performs a first sliding correlation operation and a second sliding correlation operation on the synchronization signal, and performs symbol timing synchronization according to a relationship between a sliding correlation peak generated when a sliding correlation is performed on the N1 generalized ZC sequences and a sliding correlation peak generated when a sliding correlation is performed on the N2 generalized ZC sequences.