HiBi Fiber Design Considerations for Polarization Maintaining Fiber Optic Gyroscopes (FOG)

There has been a recent push from the Fiber Optic Gyroscope (FOG) market to develop reduced outer diameter (OD) fiber coating packages, which can allow more fiber length within the same volume coil, or the potential to make the existing coil assembly smaller in volume. This does come at a cost, however, as less coating means less buffering against external stress, resulting in a higher potential for polarization cross-coupling in the fiber.Following on from the work presented in 2017 [1], this paper will discuss both the fiber and coil design considerations that can be utilized to maximize the performance of Polarization Maintaining (PM) FOGs. An overview of how the output Polarization Extinction Ratio (PER) can change over the operating temperature will also be provided. Real-world FOG coil performance data will be presented, both at 1550nm and 830nm operating wavelengths, which illustrate the significant improvement of Fibercore’s new generation reduced OD fiber products to the historical product that has already been very successful worldwide for many years.