Noise Analysis of a Passive Resonant Laser Gyroscope
Kui Liu,
Fenglei Zhang,
Zongyang Li,
Xiaohua Feng,
Ke Li,
Yuanbo Du,
Karl Ulrich Schreiber,
Zehuang Lu,
Jie Zhang
Affiliations
Kui Liu
MOE Key Laboratory of Fundamental Physical Quantities Measurements & Hubei Key Laboratory of Gravitation and Quantum Physics, PGMF and School of Physics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China
Fenglei Zhang
MOE Key Laboratory of Fundamental Physical Quantities Measurements & Hubei Key Laboratory of Gravitation and Quantum Physics, PGMF and School of Physics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China
Zongyang Li
MOE Key Laboratory of Fundamental Physical Quantities Measurements & Hubei Key Laboratory of Gravitation and Quantum Physics, PGMF and School of Physics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China
Xiaohua Feng
MOE Key Laboratory of Fundamental Physical Quantities Measurements & Hubei Key Laboratory of Gravitation and Quantum Physics, PGMF and School of Physics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China
Ke Li
MOE Key Laboratory of Fundamental Physical Quantities Measurements & Hubei Key Laboratory of Gravitation and Quantum Physics, PGMF and School of Physics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China
Yuanbo Du
MOE Key Laboratory of Fundamental Physical Quantities Measurements & Hubei Key Laboratory of Gravitation and Quantum Physics, PGMF and School of Physics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China
Karl Ulrich Schreiber
Technical University of Munich, Forschungseinrichtung Satellitengeodäsie, Geodetic Observatory Wettzell, 93444 Bad Kötzting, Germany
Zehuang Lu
MOE Key Laboratory of Fundamental Physical Quantities Measurements & Hubei Key Laboratory of Gravitation and Quantum Physics, PGMF and School of Physics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China
Jie Zhang
MOE Key Laboratory of Fundamental Physical Quantities Measurements & Hubei Key Laboratory of Gravitation and Quantum Physics, PGMF and School of Physics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China
Large-scale laser gyroscopes have found important applications in Earth sciences due to their self-sufficient property of measurement of the Earth’s rotation without any external references. In order to extend the relative rotation measurement accuracy to a better level so that it can be used for the determination of the Earth orientation parameters (EOP), we investigate the limitations in a passive resonant laser gyroscope (PRG) developed at Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) to pave the way for future development. We identify the noise sources from the derived noise transfer function of the PRG. In the frequency range below 10−2Hz, the contribution of free-spectral-range (FSR) variation is the dominant limitation, which comes from the drift of the ring cavity length. In the 10−2 to 103Hz frequency range, the limitation is due to the noises of the frequency discrimination system, which mainly comes from the residual amplitude modulation (RAM) in the frequency range below 2 Hz. In addition, the noise contributed by the Mach–Zehnder-type beam combiner is also noticeable in the 0.01 to 2 Hz frequency range. Finally, possible schemes for future improvement are also discussed.