Quick Search:    advanced search

GSW Home   GeoRef Home   My GSW Alerts   Contact GSW   About GSW   Journals List   Help

This Article Figures Only Full Text Full Text (PDF) Submit a response Alert me when this article is cited Alert me when eLetters are posted Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Search for Related Content GeoRef GeoRef Citation

Expert answers

Digital geophones

This article first appeared in the May 2004 of the CSEG Recorder in the regularly featured column "Expert Answers." There is widespread interest today on the subject of digital phones and how successful they are in recording seismic data. Due to this subject's importance to land seismic acquisition practitioners worldwide, CSEG editor Satinder Chopra, who posed the questions and edited the answers, made them available to TLE for greater exposure beyond the Canadian geophysical community. Answering the questions are experts Jon Tessman (Input/Output) and Norman Cooper (Mustagh Resources). The text has been edited and reformatted to conform to TLE style and is published with kind permission of CSEG.

What volume seismic data is being recorded using digital geophones. Will this trend change?

Tessman—According to I/O's records, between 1999 and 2003, greater than 500 million traces of data had been acquired worldwide—but mostly in the Western Canadain Basin—using VectorSeis True Digital technology. The technology employed by these systems represents a fundamental departure from the conventional techniques, both from the sensor side (high vector fidelity, linear frequency and phase response, broad bandwidth, etc.) as well as the telemetry infrastructure required to support efficient field operations (high levels of automated power and telemetry redundancy).

In an effort to both improve the quality of conventional P-wave data and our understanding of rock properties by acquiring shear-wave data, commercial digital sensors are generally packaged as full-wavefield (three-component) systems. While single component systems are possible, they would negate many benefits and offer little advantage over conventional systems. In a full-wavefield system, the P-wave data benefit from the ability to record the entire wavefield and extract the vertical component far more precisely than ever before.

Conventional systems rely on the geophone plants to be vertical to achieve this. Given all the factors present in the field, . . . [Full Text of this Article]