Characterization of a High Resolution Acquisition System for Marine Geophysical Applications

Many geophysical applications as refraction seismicity where the signal level is low and the environmental noise level is high demand low noise, high resolution acquisition systems for data recording. A datalogger based on compact flash memory cards and 24 bits analog-to-digital converters has been designed and built, to be used in our new ocean bottom seismometers (OBS) under construction. This paper presents a characterization test bench to obtain the noise specifications of the acquisition system. Parameters as dynamic range, random noise, effective number of bits, etc. are calculated using the international standards for characterizing waveform recorders and analog-to-digital converters