Estimating the horizontal and vertical direction-of-arrival of water-borne seismic signals in the northern Philippine Sea

J Acoust Soc Am. 2013 Oct;134(4):3282-98. doi: 10.1121/1.4818843.

Abstract

Conventional and adaptive plane-wave beamforming with simultaneous recordings by large-aperture horizontal and vertical line arrays during the 2009 Philippine Sea Engineering Test (PhilSea09) reveal the rate of occurrence and the two-dimensional arrival structure of seismic phases that couple into the deep ocean. A ship-deployed, controlled acoustic source was used to evaluate performance of the horizontal array for a range of beamformer adaptiveness levels. Ninety T-phases from unique azimuths were recorded between Yeardays 107 to 119. T-phase azimuth and S-minus-P-phase time-of-arrival range estimates were validated using United States Geological Survey seismic monitoring network data. Analysis of phases from a seismic event that occurred on Yearday 112 near the east coast of Taiwan approximately 450 km from the arrays revealed a 22° clockwise evolution of T-phase azimuth over 90 s. Two hypotheses to explain such evolution-body wave excitation of multiple sources or in-water scattering-are presented based on T-phase origin sites at the intersection of azimuthal great circle paths and ridge/coastal bathymetry. Propagation timing between the source, scattering region, and array position suggests the mechanism behind the evolution involved scattering of the T-phase from the Ryukyu Ridge and a T-phase formation/scattering location estimation error of approximately 3.2 km.

Publication types

  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Acoustics* / instrumentation
  • Equipment Design
  • Fourier Analysis
  • Models, Theoretical
  • Motion
  • Oceanography / instrumentation
  • Oceanography / methods*
  • Oceans and Seas
  • Philippines
  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Scattering, Radiation
  • Seawater*
  • Sound Spectrography
  • Sound*
  • Time Factors
  • Transducers