Systematic Measurement of Temperature Errors of Positive and Negative FOG Scale Factors Using a Low-Precision Turntable

Abstract

Measurement of temperature errors of fiber optic gyro (FOG) scale factor is important in FOG technology. In traditional methods, the measurement errors of FOG scale factors are greatly affected by the turntable’s orientation control errors. This article proposes a systematic method to measure the positive and negative FOG scale factor errors using a low-precision turntable. The relationship between the inertial navigation errors and the complete inertial measurement unit errors is revealed. A simplified tracking algorithm is devised to obtain the change rates of the velocity errors with lower computation. A measurement procedure is designed, with three groups of π and -π rotations around the east axis of the turntable at each temperature. Observation equations are derived to estimate the positive and negative FOG scale factor errors. Simulation and experimental results show that a low-precision turntable can accurately measure the FOG scale factor errors at each temperature. Furthermore, temperature errors of accelerometer biases, scale factors, and nonlinear scale factors can also be measured at the same time using the rotation sequences and formulas in this article without additional rotations.