A beamforming system synchronization architecture is proposed to allow a receiving device to synchronize to a transmitting device in time, frequency, and spatial domain in the most challenging situation with very high pathloss. A periodically configured time-frequency resource blocks in which the transmitting device uses the same beamforming weights for its control beam transmission to the receiving device. A pilot signal for each of the control beams is transmitted in each of the periodically configured time-frequency resource blocks. The same synchronization signal can be used for all stages of synchronization including initial coarse synchronization, device and beam identification, and channel estimation for data demodulation.