Design and test of prototype attitude control system as telescope stabilizer with fiber optic gyroscopes

While interferometric fiber optic gyroscopes (IFOGs) are used in the inertial guidance area as replacements for traditional spinning rotor gyroscopes, the presence of optical noise as well as cost of such systems demonstrate that IFOGs still have not been optimized for this purpose. This paper proposes a solution to these problems, describing the design details and features of an optimized prototype attitude control system that uses depolarized IFOGs in the gyros and mounts depolarizers simultaneously on the entrance and exit of the fiber loop. Preliminary tests of an attitude control system built using these IFOGs demonstrate that this relatively low-cost system achieved the objective of compensating for the earth´s spin and thus could be deployed as a system for the stabilization of telescopes.