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Implementation of the E3 Agent for dApps and E3AP (no service models) (#204) These changes introduce an E3 Agent for dApps in the OAI codebase. dApps are real-time microservices designed to operate within the O-RAN ecosystem, enabling sub-10 ms Artificial Intelligence (AI) routines in the Radio Access Network (RAN). The E3 Agent enables spectrum sensing, frequency-domain signal logging, and dynamic PRB (Physical Resource Block) policies through IPC/ZMQ communication with dApps or xApps. The dApps are designed for co-location with the CU/DU, where it can interact directly with user-plane data to enable different network management scenarios such as optimizing network slicing, scheduling, and resource management. A python library for the creation of the dApps is available here [1]. Additional information about dApps: - Paper on the dApp architecture [2] - dApp framework presentation [3] - Tutorial on dApp deployment on OAI [4] As agreed in the original MR [5], this PR includes only the agent lifecycle, configuration parsing, build plumbing, and the nr-softmodem init/destroy hook. It registers zero service models, so it builds and runs as an idle agent. Concrete service models (e.g. spectrum sensing) and the PHY/MAC hooks that drive them follow in later PRs. Opt-in and dependencies - Gated behind the E3_AGENT CMake option (OFF by default) / the --build-e3 build flag. The default build is unaffected — e3ap is only compiled and linked into nr-softmodem when E3_AGENT=ON. - When enabled, requires the external libe3 library [6] (vendor-neutral E3AP C++ lib), discovered via pkg_check_modules(CLIBE3 REQUIRED libe3). It is not vendored. Install libe3 (Debian/Ubuntu): git clone https://github.com/wineslab/libe3 && cd libe3 ./build_libe3 -I # installs deps: build-essential cmake pkg-config libzmq3-dev asn1c nlohmann-json3-dev libsctp-dev ... ./build_libe3 --install # release build + installation Build & test Tested in RFsim: the gNB initializes the E3 agent, opens its setup socket (/tmp/dapps/setup), registers zero service models, and runs without crashing. Configuration The agent reads an optional E3Configuration section from the gNB config file (parsed only when E3_AGENT=ON). If absent, it falls back to built-in defaults (posix/ipc). E3Configuration : { link = "zmq"; # posix | zmq transport = "ipc"; # tcp | sctp | ipc }; The same parameters can be overridden on the command line (no config-file edit required): sudo ./nr-softmodem -O <gnb.conf> ... --E3Configuration.link zmq --E3Configuration.transport ipc Validated link/transport combinations: (zmq,ipc) (zmq,tcp) (posix,tcp) (posix,sctp) (posix,ipc). Notes - I have added a new log component E3AP specific for the ops performed by the E3 Agent. - This PR ships no gNB config file; the E3Configuration block / CLI override above is the documented way to enable the agent. Example configs follow in the next PRs. [1] https://pypi.org/project/dapps/ [2] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2501.16502 [3] https://openrangym.com/o-ran-frameworks/dapps [4] https://openrangym.com/tutorials/dapps-oai [5] https://gitlab.eurecom.fr/oai/openairinterface5g/-/merge_requests/3361 [6] https://github.com/wineslab/libe3 Reviewed-by: Teodora Vladić <teodora.vladic@openairinterface.org> Reviewed-by: Sagar Arora <sagar.arora@openairinterface.org> Reviewed-by: Robert Schmidt <robert.schmidt@openairinterface.org>