Next generation optical fibers for small diameter fiber optic gyroscope (FOG) coils

Abstract

To drive higher performance and smaller sized fiber optic gyroscope (FOG) coils smaller diameter optical fibers are required to allow more fiber to be used within these coils and/or to reduce the coil diameter. The reduction in fiber size and increase in FOG coil layers reduces the polarization extinction ratio (PER) capabilities of the optical fiber. To address this a new FOG polarization maintaining (PM) fiber has been developed with a lower stress coating package which offers enhanced microbend isolation and improved Bow Tie shapes for optimized glass performance resulting in a boost of 5dB or more in the PER performance of small diameter coils designed for size constrained IMUs with drift performance over environmental conditions of <<1.0 deg/hr with significantly larger than 300 meters of fiber length.