Laser- and Radar-based Mission Concepts for Suborbital and Spaceborne Monitoring of Seismic Surface Waves
The development of a suborbital or spaceborne system to monitor seismic waves poses an intriguing prospect for advancing the state of seismology. This capability would enable an unprecedented global mapping of the velocity structure of the earth's crust, understanding of earthquake rupture dynamics and wave propagation effects, and event source location, characterization and discrimination that are critical for both fundamental earthquake research and nuclear non-proliferation applications. As part of an ongoing collaboration between LLNL and JPL, an advanced mission concept study assessed architectural considerations and operational and data delivery requirements, extending two prior studies by each organization--a radar-based satellite system (JPL) for earthquake hazard assessment and a feasibility study of space- or UAV-based laser seismometer systems (LLNL) for seismic event monitoring. Seismic wave measurement requirements include lower bounds on detectability of specific seismic sources of interest and wave amplitude accuracy for different levels of analysis, such as source characterization, discrimination and tomography, with a 100 {micro}m wave amplitude resolution for waves nominally traveling 5 km/s, an upper frequency bound based on explosion and earthquake surface displacement spectra, and minimum horizontal resolution (1-5 km) and areal coverage, in general and for targeted observations. For a radar system, corresponding engineering and operational factors include: Radar frequency (dictated by required wave amplitude measurement accuracy and maximizing ranging, Doppler or interferometric sensitivity), time sampling (maximum seismic wave frequency and velocity), and overall system considerations such as mass, power and data rate. Technical challenges include characterization of, and compensation for, phase distortion resulting from atmospheric and ionospheric perturbations and turbulence, and effects of ground scattering characteristics and seismic ground motion on phase coherence over interferometric time intervals. Since the temporal sampling requirement may be finer than that possible for a high-altitude sensor to traverse a synthetic aperture length, a geostationary, real-aperture Ka-band system or constellation for equatorial and moderate-latitude global coverage is one option considered. The short wavelength would maximize interferometric sensitivity to small surface displacements and minimize required antenna area. Engineering issues include the design and deployment of a large ({approx} 100m) fixed aperture antenna; and fast electronic beam steering (entire aperture within nominal 1 s interferometric interval) with high-efficiency integrated transmit/receive modules. For a suborbital system, platform instability is an issue whereas at high earth orbit signal-to-noise and attendant power requirements dominate. Data delivery requirements include large-volume data storage and transmission; development of real-time, on-board event detection and processing algorithms, and data management structures for these very large data sets. A far-term roadmap would comprise a proof-of-concept demonstration using a laser or radar system mounted on a stratospheric balloon or UAV to image seismic wavefields from planned events (e.g. large mine blasts and/or purpose-designed explosions) and earthquake targets of opportunity. The technological challenges to developing any such seismic monitoring system, whether laser- or radar-based, are at this stage enormous. However, these concept studies suggest the long-term feasibility of such a system and drive the development of enabling technologies while fostering collaboration on meeting scientific and operational challenges of agencies such as NASA, DOE and DoD.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- US Department of Energy (US)
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-7405-ENG-48
- OSTI ID:
- 15011530
- Report Number(s):
- UCRL-CONF-206807; TRN: US200507%%514
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Presented at: 2005 IEEE Aerospace Conference, Big Sky, MT (US), 03/05/2005--03/12/2005; Other Information: PBD: 21 Sep 2004
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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