Pointing Stabilization System Using the Optical Reference Gyro

Jerold Gilmore, Tze Chien, Dale Woodbury Michael Luniewicz, and Stephen Feldgoise

Abstract:	Stabilization technology is critical to the performance of precision pointing and tracking systems. In surveillance systems, a stabilization system is required for image jitter suppression. In intersatellite communication systems, stabilization is required for receiver detector disturbance isolation, so as to enhance the received beam signal-to-noise ratio for dim target acquisition. This paper presents a closed-loop pointing stabilization system using an inertially stabilized reference beam and a fast steering mirror. The inertially stabilized reference beam is provided by an optical reference gyro (ORG). The ORG is a dry-tuned gyro implemented with a fiber-coupled light source and collimating optics on the spinning rotor to produce a stabilized reference beam. It is a compact, light-weight device. A testbed facility using a prototype ORG is presented to demonstrate the pointing stabilization system performance. Both analytical modeling and hardware test experiments were performed to evaluate the system residual jitter error in a disturbance environment. The analytical prediction was validated by the hardware test results. Based on the test and analytical results, an enhanced ORG design with an improved isolation capability and a higher spin speed was characterized. It is projected that an enhanced ORG system will achieve a submicroradian stabilization jitter performance over a 0.1-100 Hz base disturbance environment. A pointing, stabilization, alignment, and attitude determination system using the enhanced ORG is configured. Projected sizing, weight and power consumption are presented.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 49th Annual Meeting of The Institute of Navigation (1993) June 21 - 23, 1993 Royal Sonesta Hotel Cambridge, MA
Pages:	747 - 766
Cite this article:	Gilmore, Jerold, Chien, Tze, Luniewicz, Dale Woodbury Michael, Feldgoise, Stephen, "Pointing Stabilization System Using the Optical Reference Gyro," Proceedings of the 49th Annual Meeting of The Institute of Navigation (1993), Cambridge, MA, June 1993, pp. 747-766.
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