Low-Frequency Sea-Bottom Seismic Station For Offshore Exploration

There are a number of the sea-bottom seismic stations designed for marine seismic exploration for up to 500–700 meters’ depth. As a seismic sensitive element, the stations use standard electromechanical geophone which is a spring-mounted coil placed in magnetic field produced by a permanent magnet fixed on the sensor case. The standard geophones exhibit poor sensitivity to signals at frequencies below 10–12 Hz. As a result, the systems have the limited frequency operating range.

In the reported study we used the MET sensors as primary sensitive elements to build an autonomous sea-bottom seismic station for operation offshore to depths down to 500 meters. The frequency band of the station is 1–300 Hz. So, it covers a low frequency part of the spectrum which is needed for broadband processing and receiving information from a deep subsurface formation.