Eliminating False Alarms when detecting Seismic Events Automatically

Abstract

ONE of the principal difficulties of using the full capabilities of a seismic array and a digital computer for the automatic detection of seismic events is the number of false alarms produced by spurious noise spikes on single channels. That this is a problem is shown by the fact that the usual dynamic range between the background noise level and saturation is normally in excess of 40 dB. Large noise impulses on a single channel will therefore predominate on a phased sum of the array seismometer outputs unless the number of sensors is very large.