Abstract
The broadband ocean bottom seismometer (BBOBS) and its new generation
system (BBOBS-NX) have been developed in Japan, and we performed several
test and practical observations to create and establish a new category
of the ocean floor broadband seismology, since 1999. Now, the data
obtained by our BBOBS and BBOBS-NX is proved to be adequate for
broadband seismic analyses. Especially, the BBOBS- NX can obtain the
horizontal data comparable to land sites in longer periods (10 s –).
Moreover, the BBOBST-NX is in practical evaluation for the mobile tilt
observation that enables dense geodetic monitoring. The BBOBS-NX system
is a powerful tool, although, it has intrinsic limitation of the ROV
operation. If this system can be used without the ROV, like as the
BBOBS, it should lead us a true breakthrough of ocean bottom seismology.
Hereafter, the new autonomous BBOBS-NX is noted as NX-2G in short. The
main problem to realize the NX-2G is a tilt of the sensor unit on
landing, which exceed the acceptable limit (±8°) in about 50%. As we
had no evidence at which moment and how this tilt occurred, we tried to
observe it during the BBOBST-NX landing in 2015 by attaching a video
camera and an acceleration logger. The result shows that the tilt on
landing was determined by the final posture of the system at the
penetration into the sediment, and the large oscillating tilt more than
±10° was observed in descending. The function of the NX-2G system is
based on 3 stage operations as shown in the image. The glass float is
aimed not only to obtain enough buoyancy to extract the sensor unit, but
also to suppress the oscillating tilt of the system in descending. In
Oct. 2016, we made the first in-situ test of the NX-2G system with a
ROV. It was dropped from the sea surface with the video camera and the
acceleration logger. The ROV was used to watch the operation of the
system at the seafloor. The landing looked well and it was examined from
the acceleration data. As the maximum tilt in descending was about
±2.5°, the glass float effectively suppressed the oscillating tilt. The
extraction of the sensor unit was also succeeded with the total buoyancy
of about 75 kgf within about 2.5 minutes. As the final step experiment,
the one-year-long observation of this NX-2G system has been started in
this April with the BBOBS, to obtain simultaneous data for the noise
level evaluation.