Inertial Reference Corrective Approaches to Complementary Antenna Pedestal Gyro Units

Attitude control of antenna pedestal platforms traditionally require costly inertial navigation systems to provide signal referencing to the pedestal"s rate gyros. This is primarily due to the rate drift that is inherent across all gyro technologies. Fiber Optic Gyros offer excellent drift and sensitivity performance, with up to 1000 times better bias stability than the best MEMs gyros, and have practically no G-sensitive bias. However, until now, high performance FOGs were very large, expensive and consumed significant power as they must precisely control their fiber-coil temperatures. Such devices are not practical for use on smaller antenna pedestals. SA Photonics has developed key FOG technologies that enable the development of small, high performance gyroscopes that do not require costly temperature stabilization systems. To address the Air Force"s requirement for highly stable attitude determination of antenna pedestals, SA Photonics is pleased propose the Phase II development of small, low power, highly stable 3-axis FOG. This FOG will enable highly stable and accurate pedestal pointing over extended periods without additional sensor systems or external signals such as GPS, to correct for gyro bias drift. BENEFIT: The high accuracy, small size and low power SA Photonics proposed 3-axis gyro allows it to be applicable to multiple military applications. Those noted in this proposal include antenna platforms on multiple UAV"s and ground mobile hosts, satellite antenna platforms, advanced missile interceptor platforms such as THADD, and man portable systems such as JETS targeting system. The ever expanding need for precise pointing without the aid of GPS, be it for navigation or pointing, means that applications for a robust, compact solution such as SA Photonics"proposed gyro will continue to expand.