Improving Airgun Signal Detection with Small-Aperture Seismic Array in Yunnan

Repeating airgun sources are eco-friendly sources for monitoring the changes in the physical properties of subsurface mediums, but their signals decay quickly and are buried in the noises soon after traveling short distances. Stacking waveforms from different airgun shots recorded by a single seismic station(shot stacking) is the most popular technique to detect weak signals from noisy backgrounds, and has been widely used to process the data of Fixed Airgun Signal Transmission Stations(FASTS) in China. However, shot stacking sacrifices the time resolution in monitoring to recover a qualified airgun signal by stacking many shots at distance stations, and also suffers from persistent local noises. In this paper, we carried out several small-aperture seismic array experiments around the Binchuan FAST Station(BCFASTS) in Yunnan Province,China, and applied the array technique to improve airgun signal detection. The results show that seismic array processing combining with shot stacking can suppress seismic noises more efficiently, and provide better signal-to-noise ratio(SNR) and coherent airgun signals with less airgun shots. This work suggests that the array technique is a feasible and promising tool in FAST to increase the time resolution and reduce noise interference on routine monitoring.