低成本、小型轻质化和集成化无疑是光学陀螺的发展趋势,集成光波导陀螺就是在这种背景下提出来的.限于现有技术水平,目前该领域的研究仍处于初步阶段,未来一段时期内光波导陀螺的研究将主要集中在其核心器件(即耦合谐振腔)的材料研究与结构设计优化上.本文重点综述了慢光陀螺的相关理论与发展历程,光增益对光波导陀螺性能的影响以及快光增强型激光陀螺的研究与进展.由于波导传输损耗的限制,无源慢光陀螺相比传统光纤陀螺在灵敏度上并没有本质的提高,并且难以实现.因此,目前国际上主要尝试两种方案来解决该问题,即有源增益补偿的慢光陀螺和快光增强型激光陀螺,但两者还都属于新兴事物,目前尚未见有直接的实验与测试结果的报道,相关的理论分析和计算也需要进一步深入研究.我们也设计提出了一种新型的集成化快光增强型激光陀螺结构,预期会在光学陀螺的民用领域具有很大的应用潜力.
Since the growing trend requires gyroscopes with compact size, low cost and high integration, the integrated optical waveguide gyroscope was suggested. However, the research in this field is still at a preliminary stage which only focuses on the studies of the material research of core device (i.e. coupled resonator) and the optimization of structural design, limited to the current technology level. In this paper, the development and related theory of slow-light gyro, the impact of optical gain on the waveguide gyro performance are both reviewed, as well as the progress of fast-light laser gyro research. Compared to traditional fiber-optic gyro, the sensitivity of passive slow-light gyro cannot be substantially improved because of the existence of the waveguide transmission loss. Two options are presented to improve the sensitivity, including the schemes of slow-light gyro with active gain and fast-light laser gyro. The development process of the two schemes which has been thoroughly discussed in this paper indicates that no direct experimental or test results have been reported by now, and further studies on theoretical analysis and calculation still need to be done. In the end, a new type of integrated fast-light enhanced laser gyro structure is proposed, which may have great potential applications in low-cost civilian areas.