Two types of fiber optic gyros are being developed.

The first type is an open-loop fiber optic gyro with a dynamic range on the order of 1000 to 5000 (dynamic range is unitless), with a scale factor accuracy of about 0.5% (this accuracy number includes nonlinearity and hysterisis effects) and sensitivities that vary from less than 0.01 Degree =hr to 100 Degree =hr and higher. These fiber gyros are generally used for low-cost applications where dynamic range and linearity are not the crucial issues.

The second type is the closed-loop fiber optic gyro that may have a dynamic range of 106 and scale factor linearity of 10 ppm or better. These types of fiber optic gyros are primarily targeted at medium- to high-accuracy navigation applications that have high turning rates and require high linearity and large dynamic ranges.