Pseudorapidity density of charged particles and its centrality dependence in Pb–Pb collisions at <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" altimg="si1.gif" overflow="scroll"><mml:msqrt><mml:msub><mml:mrow><mml:mi>s</mml:mi></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mi>N</mml:mi><mml:mi>N</mml:mi></mml:mrow></mml:msub></mml:msqrt><mml:mo>=</mml:mo><mml:mn>2.76</mml:mn><mml:mspace width="0.25em"/><mml:mtext>TeV</mml:mtext></mml:math>

We present the measurement of the charged-particle pseudorapidity (η) density distribution, dNchdη, for a number of centrality bins in Pb–Pb collisions at sNN=2.76TeV over a wide pseudorapidity range. Using the innermost pixel layers of the ALICE tracking system and the ALICE forward detectors (VZERO and FMD), we cover the pseudorapidity range: −5<η<5.5. The analysis is performed using a dedicated technique utilizing the collisions with LHC ‘satellite’ bunches. These collisions have displaced vertices in the range −187.5<Zvtx<375cm. The resulting distributions allow for an estimate of the total number of produced charged particles, Nch, in Pb–Pb collisions at the LHC energy.