Abstract:

The article describes the presentation of an actual engineering problem, that of checking and ascertaining the feasibility and defining the equipment of a fiber-optic link. The presentation is made to undergraduate electronic engineering students with the aim the students to comprehend the basic concepts and engineering issues regarding signal impairment processes in optical fibers as well as the use of optoelectronic equipment for the implementation of actual telecommunication links. The presentation is aided by the use of concept maps and the Kahoot gaming tool.

The presentation took place in the context of a two-teaching-hour lecture in the framework of the 6th-semester “Optical Communications” course at the Electrical & Electronic Engineering Educators Dept., School for Pedagogical & Technological Education (ASPETE), Athens, Greece. The students were already familiar with optoelectronics and fiber-optics basics.

At first, concept maps were used for an overview of the main signal degradation mechanisms that is attenuation, dispersion and non-linear phenomena. Then, the basic feasibility calculations were presented aiming at specifying the feasible bit-rate / distance product without the use of additional equipment such as optical amplifiers, dispersion compensation fibers and/or regenerators.

As a homework exercise, the students were asked to develop an algorithm illustrating the process of the feasibility calculation that would be discussed during the subsequent lecture. The overall procedure was evaluated by means of a short questionnaire, distributed to the students, that should be answered by means of a 5-grade Likert scale. Students’ answers were a strong indication that the above described approach was generally successful.

Keywords:

Engineering Education, Electronic Engineering Education, Concept maps, Kahoot, Fiber optics, Attenuation, Dispersion, Non-linear optics.