EGU23-7309, updated on 04 Jan 2024
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-7309
EGU General Assembly 2023
© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Effects of cable geometry and specific noise sources on DAS monitoring potential

Emanuele Bozzi1, Nicola Piana Agostinetti1, Alan F. Baird2, Carlos Becerril3, Biondo Biondi4, Andreas Fichtner5, Sara Klaasen5, Nate Lindsey6, Takeshi Nishimura7, Patrick Paitz8, Junzhu Shen9, Arantza Ugalde10, Fabian Walter8, Siyuan Yuan4, Tieyuan Zhu9, and Gilberto Saccorotti11
Emanuele Bozzi et al.
  • 1University of Milano Bicocca, Environmental and Earth Sciences (DISAT) , Milan, Italy (e.bozzi3@campus.unimib.it)
  • 2NORSAR, Kjeller, Norway
  • 3Université Côte d'Azur, CNRS, Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur, IRD, Géoazur, Valbonne, France
  • 4Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA
  • 5ETH Zürich, Earth Science, Seismology & Wave Physics, Zürich, Switzerland
  • 6FiberSense™
  • 7Tohoku University, Department of Geophysics, Tohoku, Japan
  • 8Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research, WSL, Switzerland
  • 9Pennsylvania State University, Department of Geosciences, State College, USA
  • 10Institut de Ciències del Mar, Barcelona Center for Subsurface Imaging, Barcelona, Spain
  • 11Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV), Pisa, Italy

The Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) method re-purposes fiber optic cables into a very-dense array of strain/strain-rate sensors, capable of detecting different types of seismic events. However, DAS data are characterized by lower SNRs compared with standard seismic sensors, mainly because of a) strong directivity effects, 2) ground coupling inhomogeneities, and 3) site effects. Hence, beyond the array geometry, specific noise sources may reduce the potential of DAS for seismic monitoring. Previous research has already shown successful case-studies for event detection/location. Nevertheless, a coherent test on the performances of various arrays of different sizes and geometries is still lacking.

In this study, an extensive DAS database is organized for such a goal, including 15 DAS arrays that recorded at least one seismic event (located at a range of distances from the arrays). P wave arrival times are exploited to estimate the epicentral parameters with a Markov Chain Monte Carlo method. Then, to analyze the effects of cable geometry and potential sources of noise/ambiguity on the location uncertainties, a series of synthetic tests are performed, where synthetic traveltimes are modified as follows: a) adding noise with equal variance to all the DAS channels (SYNTH-01), b) adding noise characterized by an increasing variance with the distance from the event (SYNTH-02), c) simulating the mis-pick between P and S phases (SYNTH-03) and d) adding noise with a variance influenced by cable coupling inhomogeneities (SYNTH-04). Results show that the epicentral locations with automatic P wave arrival times have different degrees of uncertainty, given the geometrical relation between the event and the DAS arrays. This behavior is confirmed by the SYNTH-01 test, indicating that specific geometries provide a lower constraint on event location. Moreover, SYNTH-04 shows that simulating cable coupling inhomogeneities primarily reproduces the observed location uncertainties. Finally, some cases are not explained by any of the synthetic tests, stressing the possible presence of more complex noise sources contaminating the signals.

How to cite: Bozzi, E., Piana Agostinetti, N., F. Baird, A., Becerril, C., Biondi, B., Fichtner, A., Klaasen, S., Lindsey, N., Nishimura, T., Paitz, P., Shen, J., Ugalde, A., Walter, F., Yuan, S., Zhu, T., and Saccorotti, G.: Effects of cable geometry and specific noise sources on DAS monitoring potential, EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 23–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-7309, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-7309, 2023.

Supplementary materials

Supplementary material file