Identification of two vibration regimes of underwater fibre optic cables by distributed acoustic sensing

SUMMARY Distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) enables data acquisition for underwater Earth Science with unprecedented spatial resolution. Submarine fibre optic cables traverse sea bottom features that can lead to suspended or decoupled cable portions, and are exposed to the ocean dynamics and to high...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Geophysical journal international 2023-08, Vol.234 (2), p.1389-1400
Main Authors: Mata Flores, D, Mercerat, E D, Ampuero, J P, Rivet, D, Sladen, A
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Earth Sciences
Geophysics
Sciences of the Universe
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Summary:SUMMARY Distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) enables data acquisition for underwater Earth Science with unprecedented spatial resolution. Submarine fibre optic cables traverse sea bottom features that can lead to suspended or decoupled cable portions, and are exposed to the ocean dynamics and to high rates of marine erosion or sediment deposition, which may induce temporal variations of the cable’s mechanical coupling to the ocean floor. Although these spatio-temporal fluctuations of the mechanical coupling affect the quality of the data recorded by DAS, and determine whether a cable section is useful or not for geophysical purposes, the detection of unsuitable cable portions has not been investigated in detail. Here, we report on DAS observations of two distinct vibration regimes of seafloor fibre optic cables: a high-frequency (>2 Hz) regime we associate to cable segments pinned between seafloor features, and a low-frequency (
ISSN:0956-540X
1365-246X
DOI:10.1093/gji/ggad139