Search strategies for charged Higgs bosons in CMS

Strategies for the search of a charged Higgs boson with the CMS detector at the Large Hadron Collider are discussed. Whether it is "light" or "heavy", the charged Higgs boson can be discovered at the LHC, if it exists. With early data, the sensitivity to searches for a light Higgs boson is within reach. The large top quark production cross section at the LHC offers the opportunity to search for the charged Higgs boson as the decay $t\rightarrow H^+b\rightarrow \tau^+\nu\nu b$ decay can be large in extensions of the Standard Model, if the mass is lighter than the Top quark mass. A search for the charged Higgs boson in events with one lepton (electron or muon), at least two jets, large missing transverse energy, and one tau lepton can be performed for Higgs masses between 80 and 160~GeV/c$^2$.