11:45am 12:15pm (Invited) FP2.

Fiber-optic Gyroscopes George A. Pavlath Litton Guidance & Control Systems 5500 Canoga Avenue WS-07 Woodland Hills, CA 9 1360-6621 Phone: 818-719-7600 Fax: 818-715-4351 eMail: gap@gcs.litton.com Fiber optic sensors have been under development worldwide for a multitude of applications during the last twenty years. Of the many sensors reported in the literature very few have made the transition from laboratory experiment to product. One of the first fiber sensors to begin production is the fiber-optic gyroscope or equivalently the fiber gyro. The history of the fiber gyro is characterized by an early discovery of the basic physical mechanism which than lay fallow for decades until the necessary enabling technologies were developed. The physical basis of the fiber gyro is the Sagnac effect which was discovered in the early 1900s and is named after its discoverer. The Sagnac effect describes a rotation induced phase shift between counterpropagating optical waves as shown below.
$s=-

2nLD a h C

equation 1

In the above equation, L is the length of the optical path, D is its diameter, h is the wavelength of the light l propagating around the path, c is the free space velocity of light, and C is the rotation rate about an axis perpendicular to the plane of the optical path. The Sagnac effect remained a curiosity until the mid 1970s when low loss, single mode optical fibers first became available. The first demonstration of a fiber gyro was in 1976 by Vali and Shorthill'. The performance of the gyro was poor. The noise level was high and the gyro drift was very large (e.g. many degrees per second). Nevertheless, it held the promise for a new family of gyroscopes which were projected to be smaller, lighter, less costly, and more rugged than the mechanical gyros then in use or the ring laser gyros which were then in development. Development of the fiber gyro then spread throughout the world to a number of university, industrial, and government labs. The development of the fiber gyro into a practical product took the next twenty years. The various performance problems were addressed and solved by many researchers. The highlights of these developments will be touched on below. For those desiring more detailed information, reference 2 is an excellent reprint of the key papers during the development of the fiber gyro. Initial developments focused on reducing the noise level and reducing the gyro drift. Phase modulation followed by synchronous demodulation was developed to increase the signal and to reduce the gyro drift. Coherent Rayleigh backscattering was identified as a source of noise and drift and was eliminated by the use of low coherence length source$. Gyro drift was significantly reduced and the earth's rotation rate was first observed by the use of a reciprocal fiber gyro configuration6.Numerous other sources of gyro drift where identified and solved in the late 70s and the early 80s. Drift levels as low as 0.01 "/hr were achieved' in laboratory environments under constant temperature. The key development which enabled low gyro drift to be achieved was the use of polarization maintaining fiber along with a low coherence length light source'. The performance of fiber gyros at high input rates was initially poor due to the sinusoidal response of the basic fiber gyro. Closed loop operation, which had been used in mechanical gyroscopes or many years, was adapted to the fiber gyro by Cahill and Udd9 in 1979. Closed loop operation was achieved by placing optical frequency shifters (i.e. Bragg cells) at the ends of the fiber sensing coil. Much development was done on reducing the size and power requirements of the Bragg cells. Ultimately this approach was discontinued. Closed loop operation is achieved via low power integrated optic phase modulators driven by a digital serrodyne ramp". This practical implementation of this technique was discovered in the mid 80s. Development of fiber gyro products for production started in the late 1980s in many companies. The technical problems had been mainly solved but many environmental sensitivities of the and of its components remained to be overcome. Litton Guidance & Control systems started production of its LN200 product line in December 1992. The LN200 is a three axis fiber gyro based inertial measurement unit (IMU) which outputs
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compensated incremental angles and velocities. The fiber gyros perform at a 1 "ihr drift error and a 100 ppm scale factor error level over the full military environment. It is used on aircraft, helicopters, missiles, torpedoes, and spacecraft. An LN200 IMU was used on the Clementine space craft which recently mapped the moon. This was the first fiber gyro in space. Higher accuracy fiber gyros are under development for future products which will permit standalone inertial navigation (INS) of aircraft and missiles. Figure 2 shows the LN250. These gyros have obtained drift errors less than 0.01 "/hr and scale factor errors of 10 ppm over the full military environment.

Figure 1 LN200 IMU

Figure 2 LN250 INS

References 1. V. Vali and R. W. Shorthill, "Fiber ring interferometer", Applied Optics, Vol. 15(5), 1099-1100 (1976) 2. R. B. Smith and B. J. Thompson, "Selected Papers on Fiber Optic Gyroscopes", SPIE Milestone Series, Volume MS8 3. J. L. Davis and S. Ezekiel, "Techniques for Shot-Noise-Limited Inertial Rotation Measurement Using A Multiturn Fiber Sagnac Interferometer", Proc. SPIE Vol. 157, 131-136 (1978) 4.C . C. Cutler, S. A. Newton, and H. J. Shaw, "Limitation of rotation sensing by scattering", Optics Letters, Vol. .5(11), 488-490 (1980). 5 . K. B o b , P. Marten, K. Petermann, E. Weidel, and R. Ulrich, "Low drift fiber gyro using a superluminescent diode", Electron. Letts., May 14, 1981, Vol. 17, No. 10,352-353 6. R. Ulrich, "Fiber-optic rotation sensing with low drift", Optics Letters, Vol. 5(5), 173-175 (1980) 7. R. A. Bergh, H. C. Lefevre, and H. J. Shaw, "All-single-mode fiber-optic gyroscope with long-term stability", Optics Letters, Vol. 6(10), 502-504 (1981) 8. W. K. Burns, "Phase Error Bounds of Fiber Gyro with Polarization-Holding Fiber", Journal of Lightwave Technology, Vol. LT-4(1), 8-14 (1986). 9. R.F. Cahill and E. Udd, "Phase-nulling fiber-optic laser gyro", Optics Letters, Vol. 4(3), 93-95 (1979). 10. H. C . Lefevre, PH. Graindorge, H. J. Arditty, S. Vatoux, and M. Papuchon, "Double closed-loop hybrid fiber gyroscope using digital phase ramp", Proc. 3rd Intl. Conf. Optical Fiber Sensors (OFS 'SS), Technical Digest Series, PDS 7.1-7.8 (1985). 11. D. M. Shupe, "Thermally induced nonreciprocity in the fiber-optic interferometer", Applied Optics, Vol. 19(5), 654-655 (1980) 12. N. J. Frigo, "Compensation of Linear Sources of Non-Reciprocity in Sagnac Interferometers", Proc. SPIE Vol. 412,268-271 (1983)

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