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In recent years, the importance of training skillful fiber optic engineers capable of designing and analyzing fiber optic links to deliver the enormous capacity needed for the next generation of mobile phones (5G) has been proven in industry. A comprehensive curriculum for such courses should undoubtedly comprise both theoretical and hands-on skills to better prepare the engineers before entering industry. The hands-on skills can be established through experimenting with real fiber optic links. However, having access to an equipped fiber optic laboratory imposes a significant cost to the academic institutions. Therefore, similar hands-on experiences can be delivered by software simulation of the physical signal generation and propagation. Thus, identifying an efficient yet powerful tool in simulating fiber optics components and devices is of utmost importance toward successfully rendering an understanding of the physical phenomena to the graduates. This paper aims to analyze the necessity of incorporating hands-on experience through software simulation and then it suggests the course topics and the learning outcomes expected to be achieved from this course. In addition, it investigates the feedbacks obtained from graduate engineering students throughout an actual course offered on fiber optic communication and demonstrates the assessment of the strength and weaknesses of the method. Finally, it introduces a powerful software package capable of simulating a variety of optical systems and devices frequently used in a typical fiber optic link and presents the performance analysis of this software package in addressing primitive and complex problems arising in fiber optics.
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