Practical Introduction to Optical WDM Components and Systems in Student Teaching Laboratories

In this paper we describe a new family of teaching packages designed to offer a practical introduction for graduate students of Science and Engineering to the topic of wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) in fibre optics. The teaching packages described here provide students with the background theory before embarking on a series of practical experiments to demonstrate the operation and characterisation of WDM components and systems. The packages are designed in a modular format to allow the user to develop from the fundamentals of fibre optical components through to the concepts of WDM and dense WDM (DWDM) systems and onto advanced topics covering aspects of Bragg gratings. This paper examines the educational objectives, background theory, and typical results for these educational packages.