Technology of photonic crystal fiber gyroscope

The environmental adaptability problems of fiber optic gyroscope (FOG) in the practical application were introduced and the unique advantages of photonic crystal fiber (PCF) were summarized based on its structure characteristics. It was indicated that the sensitivity to temperature, magnetic field and radiation can be depressed greatly in FOG with PCF. Experimental research testified the loss and mode characteristic of solid-core polarization maintaining (PM) PCF, and the affects due to temperature, magnetic field and radiation were obtained. The splicing and polarization axis aligning technology of PCF with conventional PM fiber was developed and 0.7 dB loss and -25 dB polarization crosstalk were achieved. A PCF-FOG prototype was made and the zero drift is about 0.09 (°)/h. The study result shows that taking PCF instead of the conventional fiber in FOG is a optimized scheme that can solve the application problem due to temperature, magnetic field and radiation etc.