Minimal scheme for optically compensated Interferometric Fiber-Optic Gyroscopes

Abstract

Polarization Nonreciprocity (PN) is one of the most significant error sources in Interferometric Fiber-Optic Gyroscopes (IFOGs). In IFOG applications, PN errors must be effectively suppressed to achieve a low bias drift. Optical compensation is a recently discovered mechanism for suppressing PN errors in IFOGs. The minimal scheme for the optically compensated IFOG is proposed, which has structural complexity even lower than the conventional IFOG's minimal scheme. In the proposed scheme, optical compensation is achieved by using depolarized light and no polarizer or polarization maintaining device is required. Experimental test targeting the Earth's rotation rate shows this scheme works stably and achieves a low bias drift of 0.02°/h. © 2013 Asian Network for Scientific Information.