Optical line terminal and optical fiber access system with increased flexibility

An optical line terminal for a passive optical network, comprising

• at least a first transmitter at an optical line terminal of a passive optical network, the transmitter configured to generate a time division multiplexed (TDM) downstream optical carrier signal, said first transmitter comprising a first time lens optical signal processor comprising two phase modulation stages with chirp rate K=1/D separated by a dispersive medium with dispersion D=β2L in a K-D-K configuration, wherein β2 is the 2nd order dispersion and L is the length of the dispersive medium, such that the first time lens optical signal processor is configured to convert the TDM downstream optical carrier signal to a wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) downstream optical carrier signal for distribution to a plurality of users/Optical Network Units (ONUs) via passive demultiplexing in the passive optical network,
• at least a second transmitter for generating a wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) downstream optical data signal for distribution to said plurality of users/ONUs via passive demultiplexing in the passive optical network, and
• at least one receiver at the optical line terminal for receiving and processing an upstream signal from said users, said upstream signal distributed over the passive optical network.