Let us come back to our initial flow of discussion started in UE power on article: UE power

on - scanning/synchronisation/PLMN search - PLMN/cell selection - NAS request for RRC

connection - RRC connection establishment.
RRC connection establishment start with RRC Connection Request message; this is to be sent
over RACH/PRACH. At this point, UE presence is not known to network and so UE has to
perform random access procedure over (collision prone) shared uplink channel (known as
PRACH).
There are two physical channels which are of concern here: AICH (Acquisition Indicator
CHannel) in DL and PRACH (Physical Random Access CHannel) in UL. Both channels are
divided in slots, with AICH in sync with P-CCPCH and PRACH ahead of AICH by a known
time interval (7,680 chips) as shown below.

PRACH access slots are organised in 12 sets, called RACH sub-channels. The organisation
has been specified in 3GPP TS 25.214.
Network further allocates RACH sub-channels to 8 Access Service Classes (ASC). Simply
speaking, ASC denote the priority of the service for RACH request is being made; 0 is
highest priority and 7 lowest. In addition to RACH sub-channels for each ASC, UE extract
information required random access like preamble scrambling code, set of available
signatures etc.
Here is roughly how random access works (an example is shown in above diagram):
1) UE chooses one of the available signatures from system information (signature work like a
reference when later network reply back we will see in later step).

2) It scrambles chosen signature with preamble scrambling code and sends it on one of the
access slots. Access slot should belong to sub-channel of appropriate ASC. UE also has to
estimate initial power with which it is to send preamble.
3) UE then wait on AICH. Network sends back received signature on AICH. This acts as an
acknowledgement for UE.
4) Due to less power or due to collision with preamble sent by other UE, preamble might not
be received by network. If UE does not receive ack over AICH, UE try re-transmission with 1
db higher power.
5) Once AICH ack is detected, UE transmits RACH message over PRACH. There is one-toone mapping [3GPP TS 25.213] between preamble scrambling code and scrambling code that
is to be used for RACH message. So UE knows which code to use for RACH message.
Also, as scrambling code used for RACH message is different than that used for preamble,
even though other UEs send preamble at the same time as RACH message, node B can still
retrieve RACH message.
In effect, what we have done above is: we used common code to get access and then once
acknowledged, we used different but known code to send actual message.
Needless to mention, retries are made certain number of times (as indicated by network in
system information) and then access is aborted.