Aspects of the disclosure provide a method for physical broadcast channel (PBCH) processing at a base station (BS) in a wireless communication system. The method can include performing a channel coding process to generate encoded PBCH data at the BS. The encoded PBCH data is to be carried in a synchronization signal block (SS block) having an SS block index (SBI), and transmitted from a cell having a cell ID. The method can further include performing a second scrambling over the encoded PBCH data with a second scrambling code determined based on the cell ID and the SBI to generate second scrambled PBCH data.