Publications Details

Seismic signal processing optimized for a specific source and receiver

Stearns, S.D.

A seismic signal processing procedure is designed so that its performance is optimized for a specific seismic array looking for explosions at a specific teleseismic location. In this report we first describe the processing procedure, which essentially estimates beamformer signal power as a function of time in a specified frequency band. Then we calibrate the procedure for the Norwegian Regional Seismic array (NRSA) in terms of equivalent body magnitude'' (emb) level versus signal power using US Department of Interior/Geological Survey (USGS) epicenter data from documented explosions at the USSR Semipalatinsk test area in Eastern Kazakh. Finally, we test the performance of the procedure on actual NRSA data and estimate that explosions above approximately mb 4.0 at Semipalatinsk correspond with an event rate in the emb signal on the order of one to ten events per hour. We conclude that, to detect and analyze events around the clock at levels below mb 4.0, an automatic event locator must be used to process the output of the procedure described here. 8 refs., 19 figs., 1 tab.