An offset quadrature amplitude modulation orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OQAM-OFDM) passive optical network (PON) architecture with direct detection is brought up to increase the transmission range and improve the system performance. In optical line terminal (OLT), OQAM-OFDM signals at 40 Gbit/s are transmitted as downstream. At each optical network unit (ONU), the optical OQAM-OFDM signal is demodulated with direct detection. The results show that the transmission distance can exceed 20 km with negligible penalty under the experimental conditions.