Femto access points (FAP) are low-power cellular base stations that are designed to be autonomously deployed by customers indoors. Due to spectral scarcity, FAPs are expected to share spectrum with underlying macrocells. Closed access refers to the strategy where only Owners of the FAP are allowed access; whereas the FAP is open to everyone under Open access. Challenges such as dead zones or excessive signaling arise when implementing these two access strategies. Cognitive ac¬¬cess control is a hybrid approach that would have the FAP first senses the environment, prioritizes different classes of users, and then reserves a portion of femtocell radio resource for Owners while distributing the remaining to Visitors. Simulation results have shown that by utilizing the proposed Cognitive access control and reserve resource dynamically with the surrounding environment, both Macro-user and Owner throughputs will improve over the macrocell-only baseline, as well as both Closed and Open access strategies.

Femto access points (FAP) are low-power cellular base stations that are designed to be autonomously deployed by customers indoors. Due to spectral scarcity, FAPs are expected to share spectrum with underlying macrocells. Closed access refers to the strategy where only Owners of the FAP are allowed access; whereas the FAP is open to everyone under Open access. Challenges such as dead zones or excessive signaling arise when implementing these two access strategies. Cognitive ac¬¬cess control is a hybrid approach that would have the FAP first senses the environment, prioritizes different classes of users, and then reserves a portion of femtocell radio resource for Owners while distributing the remaining to Visitors. Simulation results have shown that by utilizing the proposed Cognitive access control and reserve resource dynamically with the surrounding environment, both Macro-user and Owner throughputs will improve over the macrocell-only baseline, as well as both Closed and Open access strategies.