Passive signalling in optical fibre multiple access networks

In a conventional optical fibre network, whether loop, ring, tree or star, a receiver and an optical source are normally provided at each terminal. However, there are a number of situations in which a multiplicity of active sources is unnecessary or uneconomic, or possibly even leads to degraded performance of the network. The paper summarises how one or two optical sources can be shared by many users in various configurations of multiple access networks