Eliminating bias drift error in lock-in frequency for a resonant fiber optic gyro

The accuracy of the resonant frequency servo loop is a major concern for high-performance operation of a resonant fiber optic gyro. This is usually resolved by adopting the central frequency of the laser source to track the resonance of the optical fiber ring resonator in one direction. However, the drift of the resonant frequency arising from resonator temperature fluctuation must be eliminated to maintain this accuracy. The traditional proportional integral (PI) frequency servo loop cannot address this issue very well. For instance, a bias error as large as tens or even hundreds of degrees/hour has been observed at the demodulated output of a resonant frequency servo loop. In this paper, we propose a method to eliminate this bias error by adding a double integral term in the traditional PI-based resonant frequency servo loop. We demonstrate that the double integral term can precisely track the linear resonant frequency drift, evidenced by our experimentally achieved close-to-zero bias error of −0.0009  deg/h at the demodulated output of the resonant frequency servo loop.