Compensation for the temperature dependency of fiber optic gyroscope scale factor via Er-doped superfluorescent fiber source

Scale factor, as an important indicator for evaluating the dynamic performance of high-precision fiber optic gyroscopes (FOG), shows high sensitivity to the environmental temperature. Research on the temperature dependency of scale factor is meaningful to improve the robust performance and reliability of high-precision FOG. We theoretically analyze the sensitive factors, which could cause the scale factor error, and propose an effective method to compensate the scale factor via the temperature dependency of Er-doped superfluorescent fiber source. The experimental results show that, with our method, scale factor error can be reduced from 1185 to 640 ppm over 100°C temperature range (−40°C to 60°C).