光子晶体光纤陀螺技术及其首次空间试验

Photonic crystal fiber-optic gyroscope technology and its first space experiment

光子晶体光纤具有抗辐射、抗弯曲、抗磁场干扰和温度敏感性低等优势,是空间用光纤陀螺的理想选择。针对空间用光纤陀螺,提出了四层孔和双层孔陀螺用光子晶体光纤结构,突破了光子晶体光纤长距离拉制关键技术,批量制备了陀螺用长距离低损耗实芯光子晶体光纤与空芯光子晶体光纤,利用开发的光子晶体光纤周向散射、背向散射、温度、磁等性能测试设备,全面测试与验证了光子晶体光纤性能优势。实现了光子晶体光纤耦合器、敏感环等光学器件,研制的高精度光子晶体光纤陀螺样机于2017年4月随“天舟一号”货运飞船发射成功,实现了光子晶体光纤陀螺的首次空间应用,于2020年12月用于某卫星主控,这是国际首次此类型陀螺用于卫星主闭环控制,验证了其可行性和优势,为将来广泛应用奠定了基础。

Photonic crystal fiber(PCF)has advantages of radiation resistance,bend resistance,low magnetic and temperature sensitivity.PCFs are ideal choice for space borne fiber optic gyroscopes(FOG).PCFs with four-layer holes and double-layer holes are proposed,and the key technologies of drawing of long PCF have been broken through.Long-distance low-loss solid-core photonic crystal fibers(SC-PCF)and hollow-core photonic crystal fiber(HC-PCF)for gyroscope have been mass produced,and their advantages are verified by the developed equipment for PCF circumferential scattering,backscattering,temperature,magnetic and other performance.PCF coupler,PCF sensing coil and the other optical devices are realized.A high precision photonic crystal fiber optic gyroscope(PCFOG)prototype was successfully launched with“Tianzhou-1”cargo spacecraft in April 2017,which was the first space application for PCFOG,and it was used for the control of a satellite in December 2020,which was the first time that PCFOG was used in the main closed-loop control of a satellite.The feasibility and advantages of PCFOGs are verified in these experiments,which provided a foundation for extensive application in the future.