This paper provides an overview on the research activities in autonomous
functionalities for cognitive radio and networks, carried out in FP7/E3-project. The
identified main research areas within this topic include opportunistic spectrum access
and autonomous self-x functionalities for communication nodes. Opportunistic
spectrum access delineates innovative topics concerning distributed cooperative
spectrum sensing, collaborative MAC algorithms, distributed radio resource
management algorithms, and control mechanisms for the opportunistic spectrum
access. In autonomous self-x functionalities the research covers cognitive device
management, autonomous RAT and operator selection and self-x features for
autonomous elements, including autonomous decision making functionalities for
RAT protocol configuration, negotiation on missing RAT protocol components, and
functionality for dynamic configuration of RAT protocol components