Analysis of the design of a passive resonant miniature optical gyroscope based on integrated optics technologies

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the design parameters of a passive miniature resonant optical gyroscope using integrated optics, highlighting how to achieve tactical grade performance with small diameters and addressing Kerr effect mitigation.

Contribution

It provides simple analytical expressions for the gyroscope's minimum diameter and maximum probing power, integrating state-of-the-art integrated optics technologies for miniature gyroscope design.

Findings

Tactical grade performance achievable with a few centimeters diameter

Active control of intensity unbalance mitigates Kerr effect

Guidelines for medium performance gyroscope development

Abstract

We present a simple analysis of the design of a passive miniature resonant optical gyroscope. By combining the requirements on the angular random walk and the bias stability, we end up with simple expressions of the minimum diameter of the ring waveguide cavity and the maximum power that should be used to probe it. Using state-of-the-art performances of photonic integrated circuit and whispering gallery mode technologies in terms of propagation losses and mode size, we show that tactical grade gyroscope performances can be achieved with a diameter of a few cm provided the detrimental influence of Kerr effect is mitigated, using for instance an active control of the unbalance in the intensities. We further extend the analysis to medium performance gyroscope and give some hints on the efforts to be made to potentially demonstrate a miniature resonant optical gyroscope with this level of performance.