Planar photonic gyroscopes for satellite attitude control

Planar photonic gyros have a crucial enabling role in many areas of spacecraft engineering, due to their important characteristics, such as small size and weight, reduced driving power and high reliability and overall performance. For these reasons, they are currently the topic of a quickly increasing research effort. This effort is critically reviewed in this paper where the new patented concept of miniaturized photonic gyro based on a Bragg grating ring resonator, where a 1D photonic crystal is included in the circular resonant path, is also briefly discussed.