Patent ID: 8838117

Claim:
A method for macrocell-to-femtocell hand-in, the method comprising: detecting a signal from a femto-proxy system with an access terminal while the access terminal is communicatively coupled with a macro network via a macrocell, the femto-proxy system comprising an out-of-band (OOB) femto-proxy having a corresponding globally unique OOB identifier and comprising a femtocell communicatively coupled with the macro network and having a femtocell identifier, the signal comprising the OOB identifier, wherein detecting the signal comprises detecting the signal on a predetermined frequency outside of a frequency band on which the femtocell is configured to transmit and receive data and on which the femto-proxy is configured to transmit the OOB identifier; detecting, with the access terminal, the OOB identifier corresponding to the OOB femto-proxy in the signal from the femto-proxy system; and communicating a measurement message to the macro network from the access terminal, the measurement message comprising the OOB identifier, the femtocell identifier, and a link measurement for a communications link between the access terminal and the femtocell.