Zhihao Zhang

Investigation of residual core ellipticity induced nonreciprocity in air-core photonic bandgap fiber optical gyroscope

Air-core photonic bandgap fiber (PBF) is an excellent choice for fiber optic gyroscope owing to its incomparable adaptability of environment. Strong and continuous polarization mode coupling is found in PBFs with an average intensity of ~-30 dB, but the coupling arrives at the limit when the maximum optical path difference between the primary waves and the polarization-mode-coupling-induced secondary waves reaches ~10mm, which is corresponding to the PBF length of ~110 m according to the birefringence in the PBF. Incident light with the low extinction ratio (ER) can suppress the birth of the polarization-mode-coupling-induced secondary waves, but the low-ER light obtained by the conventional Lyot depolarizers does not work here. Consequently, a large nonreciprocity and a bias error of ~13°/h are caused in the air-core photonic bandgap fiber optical gyroscope (PBFOG) with a PBF coil of ~268 m.

Thermally Optimized Polarization-Maintaining Photonic Crystal Fiber and Its FOG Application

In this paper, we propose a small-diameter polarization-maintaining solid-core photonic crystal fiber. The coating diameter, cladding diameter and other key parameters relating to the thermal properties were studied. Based on the optimized parameters, a fiber with a Shupe constant 15% lower than commercial photonic crystal fibers (PCFs) was fabricated, and the transmission loss was lower than 2 dB/km. The superior thermal stability of our fiber design was proven through both simulation and measurement. Using the small-diameter fiber, a split high precision fiber optic gyro (FOG) prototype was fabricated. The bias stability of the FOG was 0.0023 °/h, the random walk was 0.0003 °/h, and the scale factor error was less than 1 ppm. Throughout a temperature variation ranging from −40 to 60 °C, the bias stability was less than 0.02 °/h without temperature compensation which is notably better than FOG with panda fiber. As a result, the PCF FOG is a promising choice for high precision FOG applications.

An investigation of secondary wave-induced intensity modulation in fibre optic gyroscope

Abstract We propose a double-eigenfrequency-based method to determine the magnitude of the mode-mismatch-induced secondary waves in integrated optic chip in a fibre optic gyroscope (FOG). The experimental results show that the mode-mismatch-induced secondary waves have a magnitude corresponding to power coupling of ~−91.5 dB in the IOC. Based on the obtained secondary waves’ magnitude, the effect of secondary wave-induced intensity modulation on the FOG performance is investigated, and the simulation results show that it causes a scale factor error of ~0.01 ppm for a high-precision FOG (bias stability ~0.001 °/h).

Stress-induced phase sensitivity of small diameter polarization maintaining solid-core photonic crystal fibre

Abstract Small diameter (cladding and coating diameter of 100 and 135 μm) polarization maintaining photonic crystal fibres (SDPM-PCFs) possess many unique properties and are extremely suitable for applications in fibre optic gyroscopes. In this study, we have investigated and measured the stress characteristics of an SDPM-PCF using the finite-element method and a Mach–Zehnder interferometer, respectively. Our results reveal a radial and axial sensitivity of 0.315 ppm/N/m and 25.2 ppm per 1 × 105 N/m2, respectively, for the SDPM-PCF. These values are ~40% smaller than the corresponding parameters of conventional small diameter (cladding and coating diameter of 80 and 135 μm) panda fibres.