Dual-polarization interferometric fiber optic gyroscope with Shupe effect compensation

Abstract

Dual-polarization (DP) interferometric fiber optic gyroscope (IFOG) has been studied for over a decade, which has important applications in inertial navigation and rotational seismology. Currently, the Shupe effect is an important factor degrading the accuracy of the DP IFOG. Here, a dual-quadrupolar winding pattern is proposed to compensate for the Shupe effect. The finite-element simulation experiments verify that the phase shifts induced by the Shupe effect in two polarizations are almost reversed and well compensated. Static laboratory test results show that, in this configuration, the angle random walk is reduced 10-fold to 7.1×10−5 °/h, while the bias instability is reduced ninefold to 1.7×10−4 °/h. Moreover, a 3-h temperature variation experiment is carried out. The results show that, compared with the original output, the net rotation rate errors originating from the Shupe effect are effectively compensated and the temperature drift is reduced by 13 times. To summarize, the dual-quadrupolar-wound method is a valid approach to compensate for the Shupe effect, and the temperature adaptability of this DP configuration is greatly enhanced.