Amplified fiber ring resonator gyro

The sensitivity of a fiber-optic ring resonator gyro increases with increasing resonator finesse, which can be achieved by including a fiber amplifier in the ring. The spontaneous emission from a fiber amplifier introduces additional noise. The effect of this noise on the performance of an amplified fiber ring resonator gyro (ARRG) is theoretically investigated, assuming an infinity source coherence length. It is found that for a given fiber length, the uncertainty in measuring the rotation rate with an ARRG can be more than one order of magnitude lower than with a shot noise limited passive ring resonator gyro (PRRG), and about three orders of magnitude lower than with an interferometric fiber optic gyro (IFOG).<>