A Compact Four-Axis Interferometric Fiber Optic Gyroscope Based on Multiplexing for Space Application

A compact quad interferometric fiber optic gyroscope (IFOG) is demonstrated for attitude determination in space application, which combines efficiently multiplexing technology with redundancy technology. Compared with existing typical three-axis and four-axis systems, the IFOG not only reduces greatly the size, weight, power consumption and cost, but also improves dramatically the reliability. Based on the configuration, a multiplexing modulation method and a control method are proposed. A prototype is manufactured, which achieves the angle random walk of less than 0.025 deg/√h and the bias instability of less than 0.15 deg/h. The weight and power consumption of the prototype are 3.5 times and 2.6 times less than the existing system with roughly the same performance, respectively. The fault injection experiments are conducted and verify that the control method is available for fault recovery.