Development of an auto-orienting geophone

Eric V. Gallant, Robert R. Stewart, Malcolm B. Bertram

This note discusses development of an auto-orienting multicomponent geophone. Industry standard 3-component geophones available at present are equipped with leveling bubbles and directional arrows to aid in the deployment of the geophones on the spread. They also have one or more spikes on the base to couple the geophone to of the ground. Forcing the geophone into the ground while moving it back and forth to keep the leveling bubble centered, reduces the ground pressure around the spikes, thus reducing the coupling of the geophone. This in turn affects the quality of the signal recorded by the instruments. A auto-orienting multicomponent geophone would reduce the cost and the time it takes to set up a seismic survey by simplifying the deployment of the geophone spread.