Navigation-grade interferometric air-core antiresonant fibre optic gyroscope with enhanced thermal stability
Maochun Li, Yizhi Sun, Shoufei Gao, Xiaoming Zhao, Hui Fei, Wei Luo, Qingbo Hu, Hao Chen, Helin Wu, Yingying Wang, Miao Yan, Wei Ding
Abstract
Abstract We present a groundbreaking navigation-grade interferometric air-core fibre optic gyroscope (IFOG) using a quadrupolar-wound coil of four-tube truncated double nested antiresonant nodeless fibre ( t DNANF). This state-of-the-art t DNANF simultaneously achieves low loss, low bend loss, single-spatial-mode operation, and exceptional linear polarization purity over a broad wavelength range. Our 469 m t DNANF coil demonstrated a polarization extinction ratio (PER) of ~20 dB when illuminated by an amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) source spanning 1525-1565 nm. Under these conditions, the gyro archives an angular random walk (ARW) of 0.00383 deg h −1/2 and a bias instability (BI) drift of 0.0017 deg h −1 , marking the first instance of navigation-grade performance in air-core FOGs. Additionally, we validated the low thermal sensitivity of air-core FOGs, with reductions of 9.24/10.68/6.82 compared to that of conventional polarization-maintaining solid-core FOGs of the same size across various temperature ranges. These results represent a significant step towards long-standing promise of high-precision inertial navigation applications with superior environmental adaptability.