A Simple, Full-Dynamic-Range Optical Heterodyne Single-Mode Fiber Gyroscope

Abstract

In this study, a theoretical design of a simple fiber-optic gyroscope is proposed. This fiber-optic gyroscope not only realizes the full-dynamic-range of Sagnac-phase measurement, but also eliminates the excess phase affected by the elliptical birefringence of a single-mode fiber coil. Under the conditions that the fiber coil has 1100 turns and the fiber length is 242.9 m, the bias stability of this gyroscope is theoretically evaluated as 9.44 °/h. In this study, we also discuss the error signal that arises from the intensity stability, as well as the polarization nonreciprocity. We generate 1000 random values to simulate the possible distribution of a bias drift, and the result shows that the drift of the Sagnac phase is less than 10 $^{-3{\circ}}$ . In addition, we deduce the influence of the error signal induced by polarization nonreciprocity. The result indicates that the maximum error arises if the reciprocal phase of the SMF is $\varphi = 2m\pi $ ( $m = 0, \pm 1, \pm 2, \pm 3,\ldots$ ) and the optical rotation angle is $\theta = 45^{\circ}$ .