Development of components for IFOG-based inertial measurement units using polymer waveguide fabrication technologies

Active and passive polymer materials have been successfully used in the development of highly accurate, compact and low cost guided- wave components: an optical transceiver and a phase modulator, for inertial measurement units ( IMUs) based on the interferometric fibre optic gyroscope ( IFOG) technology for precision guidance in navigation systems. High performance and low noise transceivers with high optical power and good spectral quality were fabricated using a silicon- bench architecture. Low loss phase modulators with low halfwave drive voltage ( V-pi) have been fabricated with a backscatter compensated design using polarizing waveguides consisting of CLD- and FTC- type high performance electro-optic (E-O) chromophores. Gyro bias stability of less than 0.02 degrees h(-1) has been demonstrated with these guided- wave components.