Experimental analysis of the dynamic north-finding method based on a fiber optic gyroscope

This paper demonstrates the principles of static and dynamic north-finding methods by measuring the projection of the Earth's rotation rate with a fiber optic gyroscope. For a comprehensive comparison of the two methods, the influence of a closed-loop feedback mechanism of a servo motor in a turntable is taken into consideration. Thus, we proposed the static and dynamic north-finding experimental implementations according to the different impact of the motor jitters and the different seeking times. Experimental results show that the dynamic method can reduce the north-finding bias error and instability by 60.1% and 54.6%, respectively, in the seeking time of 360 s, while the reduced proportions are 81.3% and 82.5%, respectively, in the seeking time of 120 s, compared with the static method under the jittering effect of the turntable. Therefore, it can be concluded that the dynamic method is more accurate and robust to the jittering effect.