AbstractNowadays, bandwidth demand is enormously increasing, that causes the existing passive optical network (PON) to become the future optical access network. In this paper, next generation passive optical network 2 (NG-PON2) based, optical time division multiplexing passive optical network (OTDM-PON), wavelength division multiplexing passive optical network (WDM-PON) and time & wavelength division multiplexing passive optical network (TWDM-PON) systems with 20 Gbps (8 × 2.5 Gbps) downstream and 20 Gbps (8 × 2.5 Gbps) upstream capacity for eight optical network units has been proposed. The performance has been compared by varying the input power (−6 to 27 dBm) and transmission distance (10–130 km) in terms of Q-factor and optical received power in the presence of fiber noise and non-linearities. It has been observed that TWDM-PON outperforms OTDM-PON and WDM-PON for high input power and data rate (20/20 Gbps). Also, TWDM-PON shows its superiority for long-reach transmission up to 130 km, which is a cost-effective solution for future NG-PON2 applications.