APPLICATIONS
Fiber Optic Gyroscopes
for Sea, Land, Aerospace and Military

EXALOS offers robust and highly qualified SLEDs for a diverse range of FOG applications. These SLEDs can operate over demanding temperature ranges, increased shock/vibrations levels, and have verified long lifetimes due to their use in defense and space environments.
EXALOS provides SLEDs that are less sensitive to wavelength shifts induced by temperature or aging. By using innovative materials and material structures it was possible to improve the wavelength stability of our devices by a factor of four compared with conventional devices.
EXALOS offers robust and highly qualified SLEDs for a diverse range of FOG applications. These SLEDs can operate over demanding temperature ranges, increased shock/vibrations levels, and have verified long lifetimes due to their use in defense and space environments.
EXALOS provides SLEDs that are less sensitive to wavelength shifts induced by temperature or aging. By using innovative materials and material structures it was possible to improve the wavelength stability of our devices by a factor of four compared with conventional devices.
A A key application for SLED is in navigation systems, such as those in avionics, aerospace, sea, terrestrial, and subsurface, that use fiber-optic gyroscopes (FOGs) to make precise rotation measurements [ 1 ], [ 2 ]. FOGs measure the Sagnac phase shift of optical radiation propagating along a fiber-optic coil when it rotates around the winding axis. When a FOG is mounted within a navigation system, it tracks changes in orientation.
The basic components of a FOG, as shown in Fig. 1, are a light source, a single-mode fiber coil (could be polarization-maintaining), a coupler, a modulator, and a detector. Light from the source is injected into the fiber in counter-propagating directions using the optical coupler.
When the fiber coil is at rest, the two light waves interfere constructively at the detector and a maximum signal is produced at the demodulator. When the coil rotates, the two light waves take different optical path lengths that depend on the rotation rate. The phase difference between the two waves varies the intensity at the detector and provides information on the rotation rate.
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EXALOS´ industry-leading solutions for Fiber Optic Gyroscope applications
EXALOS PRODUCTS
SLED MODULES
EXALOS PRODUCTS
SWEPT SOURCES
Fig. 1 Generic setup of a fiber optic gyroscope (FOG).
SLED-based gyroscopes rely on the large bandwidth of the source to reduce both the large Kerr- induced drift and the high coherent backscattering noise along the fiber as well as to minimize noise from reflections at the facets of the internal optical components, which could decrease the sensitivity at very-low rotation rates.
Furthermore, SLEDs with high polarization extinction ratio (PER) are desired in order to reduce the insertion loss of the polarization-dependent optical components. Amplitude noise is also of concern for those applications, so broadband light sources with relative intensity noise (RIN) values of -120 dBc/Hz or less are required. The amplitude noise requirement also places stringent requirements on the low-noise performance of the electrical current driver of the SLED.

Benefits of EXALOS’s SLEDs for Fiber Optic Gyroscopes
The key requirements for Fiber Optic Gyroscopes are typically low cost, reduced form factor, low power consumption, long-term stability and high reliability. In the past, wavelength stability over time was a major drawback of semiconductor based broadband light sources like SLEDs compared with fiber-based light sources such as erbium-doped fiber-amplifiers.
At EXALOS, we have successfully overcome this drawback by developing SLEDs that are less sensitive to wavelength shifts induced by temperature or aging. Novel materials and material structures have made it possible to improve the wavelength stability of our devices by a factor of four compared with conventional devices. Further work is in progress with the target of achieving wavelength stabilities down to the 10 parts-per-million range. SLEDs with this performance will help to reduce the size and cost of FOGs substantially.
EXALOS has a portfolio of products qualified for FOG applications that require extended operating temperature ranges, increased shock/vibrations levels and verified lifetimes due to their use in space environments.
Examples of such products include Uncooled Free-Space SLEDs and Cooled & Uncooled Fiber-Coupled SLEDs [3]) as well as Cooled or Uncooled transceiver modules with an integrated beam splitter and a receiver photodiode [4]. SLED-Transceivers are particularly interesting when realized with a polarization-maintaining (PM) fiber output as they can be directly coupled to the fiber loop of the FOG, avoiding the complexity of realizing a PM fiber coupler.
EXALOS’ has qualified SLEDs for Space and other Military Applications. These qualifications include testing in accordance with MIL-STD-883 and Telcordia. In addition to the standard qualification tests, specific EXALOS’s SLEDs have successfully passed Gama-Radiation testing.
Reference
[1] W.K. Burns, C. Chen and R.P. Moeller, FIBER-OPTIC GYROSCOPES WITH BROAD-BAND SOURCES, Journal of Lightwave Technology, Vol. LT-1, No. 1, pp. 98-105 (1983)
[2] R.A. Bergh, H.C. Lefevre and H.J. Shaw, AN OVERVIEW OF FIBER-OPTIC GYROSCOPES, Journal of Lightwave Technology, Vol. LT-2, No. 2, pp. 91-107 (1984)
[3] EXALOS SLED Modules
[4] EXALOS SLED Transceivers