Suppression of backreflection error in resonator integrated optic gyro by the phase difference traversal method.

The phase difference traversal (PDT) method is proposed to suppress the backreflection-induced error in resonator integrated optic gyro (RIOG). Theoretical analysis shows that the backreflection-induced zero-bias fluctuation is periodical and sine/cosine-like. By forcing the phase difference between the CW and CCW incident light to traverse the interval [0, 2π] repeatedly and rapidly enough, the fluctuation can be low-pass filtered and, hence, the backreflection-induced error can be effectively suppressed. A RIOG apparatus is built up, with multi-wave hybrid phase modulation to traverse the phase difference and in-phase modulation to set the operation point. A short-term bias stability of 0.0055 deg/s and a long-term bias stability of 0.013 deg/s are successfully demonstrated which, to the best of our knowledge, are the best results reported to date for the buried-type silica waveguide ring resonator-based RIOG.