In advanced wireless OFDMA communication systems, hierarchical synchronization is adopted to synchronize between a base station (BS) and a mobile station (MS). In a hierarchical synchronization architecture, primary advanced preamble (PA-Preamble) is used for coarse time domain synchronization while cell ID is detected using several accumulated secondary advanced preambles (SA-Preambles). Network entry latency can be reduced by adjusting the relative location of superframe header (SFH), PA-Preamble and SA-Preambles within a superframe. Three different synchronization channel (SCH) architectures are proposed to provide different tradeoffs between network entry latency and the robustness of SA-Preamble design and cell ID detection.