SBIR-STTR Award

The objective is to develop an advanced IFOG-IOC (Interferometric Fiber-optic Gyroscope-Integrated Optical Circuit) for strategic-grade inertial sensors. The effort focus on an innovative Y-branch dual phase lithium niobate (LN) modulator IOC with a significantly reduced half-wave voltage (Vpi) and compact size with negligible impact on other IFOG performance criteria including flat frequency response behavior, polarization extinction ratio, and long-term operational stability.

Benefit:
The performance requirements for strategic-grade inertial sensors based on optical Interferometry continue to become more stringent, necessitating continued innovation for optical component technologies that require unprecedented precision and characterization of long-term bias stability, scale factor linearity, angle random walk performance, etc. The anticipated benefit of this proposed effort of developing a reduced half-wave voltage IOC and reduced overall size, without compromising other performance factors will enable more tightly packaged IFOG-IOC component critical suitable for military strategic-grade inertial sensors. A phase modulator with significantly reduced SWaP is likely to bring value to many existing commercial applications including LIDAR, satellite free space communications and other radar applications. Also, this technology could be leveraged to bring IFOG technology toward a price point that could make it more attractive to the commercial markets.

Keywords:
Lithium Niobate, Lithium Niobate, Integrated Optical Circuit, waveguides, Phase Modulator, Fiber-Optic Gyroscope, Y-branch, inertial sensor, half-wave voltage .