Improved DX on the development of O-RAN Near-RT RIC E2 Interface Solutions

The O-RAN alliance is pushing the development of openness and disaggregated RAN solutions. Its OAM architecture proposed components to support applications intended to monitor, manage, and control the RAN. The so-called RICs are the core components for delivering intelligent solutions. The Near-RT RIC communicates with the RAN components via the E2 interface, designed using the ASN.1 interface definition language, commonly used in the telecom domain. ANS1c is a tool to generate code in C based on the ASN.1 definitions as input. This work proposes a wrap solution to the code generated by ASN1c to facilitate the development of E2-based solutions, aiming to increase the engagement of developers to build Near-RT solutions, especially newcomers. This paper describes the methods used to better DX and evaluates its performance compared to the vanilla code generated by ASN1c. The results show a considerable overhead compared to the original ASN1c; on the other hand, this exchange significantly improves the developer experience, paving the way for more efficient and engaging development processes.