Abstract:

In times of pandemic, online teaching tools are more necessary than ever. In this sense, being able to teach laboratory practices online is being a great challenge due to the lack of tools, beyond videos showing how to carry out the practices. These difficulties are greater if the material used in the practices has a high cost and we cannot have material for all students. One method to overcome these difficulties is the use of simulation software. A tool frequently used in photonics practices for simulations is the one offered by Optiwave. Their OptiPerformer software is a free photonic design automation tool that harnesses the full power of OptiSystem and creates specific dynamic design scenarios that can be used by students. The license of OptiPerformer will be capable of loading and running OptiSystem simulations. Optiwave offer a set of simulations prepared in OptiSystem for a general knowledge of the tool, which you can copy to your PC and run the simulation. Furthermore, this year, with the confinement caused of spread of COVID-19, Optiwave offer free their OptiSystem for academic’s programs to support the education at home with online courses. This allow full access to Optiwave's nine extensive optical communication lab tasks, which allow to the student to design their own optical communication systems and measure its operation. In this document we present our experience to teach the online practical sessions of the Photonic and Optoelectronic Devices course in the master's degree in Telecommunications Engineering using these simulation softwares.

Keywords:

Telecommunication, Photonics, Software, simulation.