Open-Type Magnetic Shields for Optical Fiber Coil Protection With Coaxial Foil Tubes

To decrease the considerable nonreciprocal phase drift caused by environmental magnetic fields in fiber-optic gyroscope (FOG), magnetic shields on optical fiber coil (OFC) are necessarily used in medium- and high-accuracy FOG protection. Cubic boxes and spherical shells without any gaps have been widely adopted for decades in shields, posing challenge for tradeoff between weight limitation of shields and its shielding demand yet. Here, an open-type magnetic shields (OMSs) with several coaxial permalloy foil tubes in few hundred micrometers thickness is proposed, overlaying on the winding process of fiber coil and finally combining with OFC as an integration module (OFC-OMS). The shielding effectiveness (SE) and longitudinal availability were adjustable by changing permalloy tubes' thickness, intervals between coaxial foil tubes, and extended length in endcaps. The optimized result showed that an OMS set with six coaxial permalloy foil tubes achieved a longitudinal availability of 82.6% for SE above 20dB in both axial and radial magnetic field and further revealed anisotropic shielding effect in axial magnetic field remarkably resulting in a 40-dB longitudinal availability of 70.1%. Total mass of OMS reduced by around 75% comparing with the conventional magnetic shields for OFC, which showed immense potentials on reduction of FOG size and processing cost.