Fiber-optic gyroscope operated with a frequency-modulated laser

Stéphane Blin; Michel J. F. Digonnet; Gordon S. Kino

doi:10.1117/12.786165

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16 May 2008 Fiber-optic gyroscope operated with a frequency-modulated laser

Stéphane Blin, Michel J. F. Digonnet, Gordon S. Kino

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Proceedings Volume 7004, 19th International Conference on Optical Fibre Sensors; 70044X (2008) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.786165
Event: 19th International Conference on Optical Fibre Sensors, 2008, Perth, WA, Australia

Abstract

We propose using a frequency-modulated laser in a fiber-optic gyroscope (FOG) in a minimum configuration. Compared to the traditional broadband source, a narrow-band laser offers two significant advantages, namely the elimination of excess noise and thus improved sensitivity to rotation, and a more stable mean wavelength, hence a greater scale-factor stability. We show that the strong back-reflection and coherent backscattering noise introduced by the use of a laser is greatly reduced by modulating the laser frequency. In both a conventional FOG and in a FOG using an air-core fiber, we demonstrate experimentally that this technique reduces these two sources of noise by at least a factor of 4 compared to the same gyros operated with an unmodulated laser.

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Stéphane Blin, Michel J. F. Digonnet, and Gordon S. Kino "Fiber-optic gyroscope operated with a frequency-modulated laser", Proc. SPIE 7004, 19th International Conference on Optical Fibre Sensors, 70044X (16 May 2008); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.786165

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