Fiber-Optic Gyros - Northrop Grumman Electronic Systems ...

More documents

Recommendations

Info

24235 Dr. George A. Pavlath Fiber-Optic Gyro Director Northrop Grumman, Electronic Systems, Navigation Systems Division Dr. Pavlath is a world–recognized expert with 20 years of experience in fiber optics gyros (FOGs) and their components. He has led Northrop Grumman’s development effort in fiber-optic gyros from research and development, through product development, production transfer, and production support. His directorate has successfully completed numerous contracts with the United States Army, United States Navy, and the United States Air Force. Dr. Pavlath has worked on fiber-optic gyros and their components since 1975. At Northrop Grumman, he is responsible for all fiber-optic gyro programs including research and development, product development, factory process and test equipment development, production transfer, and support of the ongoing production activity. He has led his directorate in the development of low accuracy FOGs for cannon–launched applications, medium accuracy FOGs for attitude and heading reference systems (AHRS) and tactical missile applications, and the LN–200 family – which is in production. His directorate led in the development of high accuracy FOGs for inertial navigation of aircraft and missiles and also for shipboard gyrocompass and fire control applications. He has also led in the development of fiber optic components, integrated optic components, light sources, photodetectors, assembly techniques, and automatic manufacturing technology for component fabrication and fiber-optic gyro assembly. Dr. Pavlath received his Doctorate degree in Applied Physics from Stanford University and his Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from the California Institute of Technology. Dr. Pavlath has 21 issued patents on fiber-optic gyros and their components and assembly processes. Ten additional patents are pending. He has also published 15 papers on fiber-optic gyros.
ABSTRACT Over thirty five years have elapsed since the fiberoptic gyro was proposed by Vali and Shorthill. In those decades, fiber-optic gyros have matured. They are competing head to head in tactical, navigation and strategic applications with existing technologies such as mechanical gyros and ring laser gyros and they are winning. Northrop Grumman has produced the majority of fiber-optic gyros and fiber-optic-gyrobased inertial products in the world. This paper will cover the various Northrop Grumman fiber-optic gyro products, the platforms they are used on, and it will provide production and top level system data. INTRODUCTION It has been nearly 100 years since the discovery of the Sagnac effect 1 , which enabled optical rotation sensors. The Sagnac effect lay fallow for six decades awaiting the development of technology to permit the design and manufacture of products that could use it. The first application of the Sagnac effect was the ring laser gyro that was first demonstrated in the 1960s by Macek and Davis 2 and entered production in the late 1970s. The enabling technology for this was the laser. The development of the fiber-optic gyro required its own enabling technology, namely low loss, single mode, optical fibers that became available in the mid 1970s. Vali and Shorthill 3 first proposed the fiber-optic gyro in 1975. It took researchers around the world about a dozen years to resolve the many technical issues with the fiber-optic gyro. The reader is referred to the following paper 4 by this author for an overview of these issues and their resolutions. Over thirty years have now elapsed since Vali and Shorthill proposed the fiber-optic gyro. Fiber-optic gyros and inertial products utilizing them have been in production for over a decade. Inertial products utilizing fiber-optic gyros are in high volume production and are used everywhere from under the sea to outer space and in most places in between. The vision of Vali and Shorthill has been realized. Northrop Grumman Navigation Systems Division has manufactured well in excess of 70,000 fiber-optic gyros used in a wide variety of inertial products. These products include rate gyros, inertial measurement units (IMU), and inertial navigation systems (INS). 24235 1 NAVIGATION SYSTEMS DIVISION HERITAGE Northrop Grumman’s Navigation System Division was formed from several predecessor entities that have a rich and varied heritage in inertial products and in fiber-optic gyros. Figure 1 shows the time lines of the various predecessor entities beginning in 1980. Figure 1. Northrop Grumman Navigation Systems Division’s Heritage A portion of Navigation Systems Division comes from the purchase of Litton Industries by Northrop Grumman in 2001. These legacy Litton entities were Guidance and Control Systems (USA), Aero Products (USA), Litef (Germany), and Lital (Italy). Another portion of the division started as the Northrop Grumman Precision Products Division which became the Fibersense Technology Corporation in 1994 and was subsequently purchased by Northrop Grumman. FIBER-OPTIC GYRO PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT AT NAVIGATION SYSTEMS DIVISION Guidance and Control Systems, Litef, Lital, and Precision Products/Fibersense have been in the inertial product business since the 1960s. The legacy Litton divisions manufactured INS and IMUs. The Northrop Grumman Precision Products divisions manufactured inertial instruments and IMUs. The development of the fiber-optic gyro at Navigation Systems Division begins with the acquisition of the Stanford fiber optics program from Atlantic Richfield Corporation by Guidance and Control Systems in 1982. Figure 2 depicts the timelines for the various fiber-optic-gyro-based inertial products.
Page 1: 24235 Fiber-Optic Gyros: The Vision
Page 5 and 6: A land navigation version of the LN
Page 7 and 8: The LN-200 is used in a wide variet
Page 9 and 10: INS PRODUCTS 24235 Figure 10. The I
Page 11 and 12: Figure 16. LTN-101E Navigation and
Page 13 and 14: 24235 Figure 21. From left to right
Page 15 and 16: REFERENCES 1 G. Sagnac, “L’ethe

Fiber-Optic Gyros - Northrop Grumman Electronic Systems ...

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?