Wavelength-dependence reduction of the scale factor for tactical-grade fiber optic gyroscopes

Abstract

Fiber optic gyroscopes (FOGs) suffer from the scale-factor inaccuracy induced by the wavelength instability of the broadband source, which remains a bottleneck both in theory and in practical application. In this work, we propose a simple but effective technique for reducing the wavelength dependence of the scale factor by employing the size of the digital-ramp register as the actuator in the closed-loop scheme for nulling the ramp-reset-induced errors, instead of the conventionally-used feedback-chain gain. Experiments show that, for the tactical-grade FOG equipped with the super-luminescent diode (SLD) operating under temperatures from −40 °C to +60 °C, the proposed technique reduces the compensated scale-factor inaccuracy to 282 ppm, with respect to 2065ppm in the conventional case. This technique relaxes the stringent requirements on the wavelength stability of SLDs, which contributes to the large-scale production and application of tactical-grade FOGs.