Sagnac Effect and Fiber Optic Gyroscopes

Fiber Optic Gyroscopes

MEMS Gyroscopes Based on Acoustic Sagnac Effect †

This paper reports on the design, fabrication and preliminary test results of a novel microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) device—the acoustic gyroscope. The unique operating mechanism is based on the “acoustic version” of the Sagnac effect in fiber-optic gyros. The device measures the phase difference between two sound waves traveling in opposite directions, and correlates the signal to the a...

Fiber-optic gyroscopes based on polarization scrambling.

A novel fiber-optic gyroscope with a single-mode diode laser as the light source and two polarization scramblers as time-varying depolarizers is demonstrated. This arrangement reduces the nonreciprocal phase noise induced by the cross coupling between polarization modes in single-mode fibers. The experimental results show that a phase-noise reduction factor of 18 can be achieved.

Single Mode Fiber Optic Sagnac Interferometer with Wireless Data Collection

Since the introduction of fiber optic gyroscope in the late 1970’s 1, the need for accurate inertial navigational instruments has driven the evolution of the device into complex open or closed loop designs manufactured with expensive polarization maintaining fibers and fused fiber optic elements. Our goal herein is to describe a novel fiber optic Sagnac interferometer design made with readily a...

Gated phase-modulation feedback approach to fiber-optic gyroscopes.

A new approach to closed-loop operation of an all-fiber-optic gyroscope using phase modulation and signal gating is described. This approach provides simplicity of implementation and the capability of wide dynamic range with an approximately linear scale factor. Experimental results are compared with theoretical calculations.