A method and apparatus for hardware-in-the-loop simulation of optical fiber communication includes such steps as a power simulation system controls output data of power secondary equipment according to preset simulation experiment type, the data is processed into optical carrier with different wavelength through a wavelength converter, on the optical carrier is loaded to the first optical wavelength division multiplexer, first optical wavelength division multiplexer transmits different optical carrier to second optical wavelength division multiplexer through optical fiber; And the power simulation system obtains the closed-loop optical fiber communication hardware-in-the-loop simulation results by processing based on the optical carrier transmitted by the received second optical wavelength division multiplexer. A physical simulation method of optical fiber communication is applied to a hardware-in-the-loop simulation device of optical fiber communication, which comprises a power simulation system, a first optical wavelength division multiplexer, a second optical wavelength division multiplexer, a power secondary device and communication devices A and B. The scheme adopts wavelength division multiplexing to simulate the long-distance transmission of data and the transmission of data from different communication equipments in the communication network, thus realizing the data transmission simulation of the optical communication network.