Dual-polarization interferometric fiber optic gyroscope (IFOG) is a novel scheme in which the polarization nonreciprocal (PN) phase error of the two orthogonal polarizations can be optically compensated. In this work, we investigate the effective of PN phase error compensation under varying temperature. It is proved that, the thermally induced strain deforms the fiber, and results in perturbations on the birefringence and polarization cross coupling which degrades the IFOG's stability. A wave propagation model and analytical expressions of PN phase error are derived by using coupled-wave equation and Jones matrix. We theoretically and experimentally verify that, although the single-mode (SM) and polarization-maintaining (PM) fiber coils behave different owing to their intrinsic properties of wave propagation, the thermal strain induced PN phase error can still be compensated under slow and adiabatic temperature variations. This could be a promising feature to overcome the temperature fragility of IFOG.

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We demonstrate a novel dual-polarization interferometric fiber-optic gyroscope (IFOG), which needs only one coupler and no polarizer. Polarization nonreciprocity (PN) errors in common IFOGs will increase significantly if the polarizer is absent, or if only one coupler is used. In our setup, however, PN errors are effectively compensated by using two balanced polarizations. The 2 km coil, open-loop configuration obtains a bias instability of 0.02°/h in detecting the Earth's rotation rate. Its performance difference from the conventional two-coupler IFOG is only a stable bias, caused by coupler nonreciprocity.

The impact of residual coherent phase error in a dual-polarization interferometric fiber optic gyroscope (IFOG) is investigated. Although it has been intuitively assumed that the coherence of a light source can be eliminated by a sufficient long fiber delay, the experiment and theory indicate that it still contributes a remarkable portion to long-term instability. After the residual coherent phase error is well handled, we demonstrate a dual-polarization IFOG with bias instability of 3.56×10°/h. Comparisons show that such performance is even better than the conventional "minimal scheme" that operates on one polarization.

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