Design and Fabrication of a Ring-Coupled Mach-Zehnder Interferometer Gyroscope

In this paper, we present a CMOS-compatible integrated photonics resonant gyroscope incorporating active Si&Ge components with low-loss SiN waveguiding structures for the first time. The gyroscope design is based on a ring-coupled Mach-Zehnder interferometer (19.2 mm ring length). Based on numerical modelling, the estimated resolution is 1.08 deg/s, representing a 1.56-times improvement over a single ring all-pass design with the same footprint. Further improvement afforded by the MZI-based design is expected under Kerr effect limited conditions. Devices were fabricated with the STMicroelectronics DAPHNE (Datacom Advanced Photonics Nanoscale Environment) 300 mm Photonic R&D platform. Experimental measurements under static (non-rotating) conditions confirm the numerical modelling results.