Development of a Silicon Photonics-based Light Source for Compact Resonator Fiber Optic Gyroscopes

Abstract

This paper covers latest progress in the development and testing of a Silicon Photonics (SiP) based three-laser source for use in a next generation compact resonator fiber optic gyroscope (RFOG) targeted for commercial navigation applications.In recent years, significant progress has been made in the development of compact RFOGs using phase locked diode lasers and miniaturized optics on a silicon optical bench (SiOB) [1–3]. While we have been able to demonstrate near or at civil navigation grade performance with the technology, one of our biggest remaining hurdles is to do so using a miniaturized SiP-based multi-frequency laser source.Here we discuss the development of a compact SiP-based three-laser source based on a low-noise implementation of the Pound-Drever-Hall (PDH) method and comprising high-bandwidth optical phase-locked loops [4, 5]. These are highly coherent narrow linewidth lasers with very low differential frequency noise, which is essential to achieve the desired performance. For the first time ever, we demonstrate RFOG performance with a compact SiP-based multi-frequency laser source. Test results including angle random walk and bias results are presented and compared against past discrete laser and optic configurations.