Resonant fiber optical gyroscope using the single-mode fiber ring resonator

This paper provides a scheme for realizing high-accuracy, low-cost resonant fiber optical gyroscopes (RFOGs) with single-mode (SM) fibers. The temperature-related polarization noise, which deteriorates the bias stability of the RFOG, has been suppressed thanks to a much longer birefringence beat length of SM fibers. It is also helpful to improve the theoretical sensitivity of the RFOG because of the very low loss of the SM fiber components. A transmissive 39-m-long SM fiber ring resonator (FRR) is fabricated. The measured finesse is 58.7, and its total loss is calculated to be less than 0.3 dB. Using this SM-FRR as the sensing element, an RFOG is then set up that achieves an angular random walk of 0.0039 ∘ / √ h and a bias stability of 0.05°/h. The experimental results show that the SM-FRR scheme would be a good candidate for producing high-accuracy and low-cost RFOGs.