Chin. Sci. Bull. (2014) 59(33):4524–4535
com
DOI 10.1007/s11434-014-0369-4
Article
Passive-source ocean bottom seismograph (OBS) array
experiment in South China Sea and data quality analyses
Chenguang Liu • Qingfeng Hua • Yanliang Pei •
Ting Yang • Shaohong Xia • Mei Xue •
Ba Manh Le • Da Huo • Fang Liu • Haibo Huang
Received: 11 November 2013 / Accepted: 4 March 2014 / Published online: 26 April 2014
Ó Science China Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014
Abstract Long-term passive source ocean bottom seis-
mograph (OBS) observatory is challenging due to various
technical difficulties. In order to gain experience in this
field, and to reveal the lithospheric structure beneath the
extinct ridge in the central South China Sea (SCS), we
carried out a passive source OBS array experiment, which
includes 18 OBSs, in the deep portion of SCS. Here we
present the instrumentation, the OBS deployment and
recovery of this experiment, and more importantly, the data
quality evaluated by a number of approaches. Through
processing and inspecting waveforms from global, regional
and local earthquakes, we find that most of recovered OBSs
have good data quality with discernible main phases. The
ambient noise analyses of OBS recordings show that their
noise is higher than the global average, and the horizontal
component is noisier than the vertical, indicating current
impacts on horizontal components are more severe. In the
period range of 5–10 s, there is a noise notch for the SCS
OBSs, and noise levels of horizontal components are
comparable to the vertical. This feature, which is not seen
C. Liu
Y. Pei
College of Marine Geosciences, Ocean University of China,
Qingdao 266100, China
C. Liu
Q. Hua
Y. Pei
The First Institute of Oceanography, State Oceanic
Administration, Qingdao 266061, China
T. Yang (&)
M. Xue
B. M. Le
D. Huo
F. Liu
State Key Laboratory of Marine Geology, Tongji University,
Shanghai 200092, China
e-mail: tyang@tongji.edu.cn
S. Xia
H. Huang
South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of
Sciences, Guangzhou 510301, China
123
csb.scichina.
www.springer.com/scp
Oceanology
at OBS stations in open ocean, suggests the distant sources
for double frequency microseism in this marginal sea are
not significant. In addition, we successfully determined the
orientations for 7 OBSs by investigating their Rayleigh
wave polarizations; and we demonstrated the dispersion
feature of Rayleigh waves through the frequency-time
analysis. Finally, we summarized lessons learned from this
experiment regarding the passive source OBS investiga-
tions in SCS.
Keywords Ocean bottom seismograph
Passive-
source OBS observatory
South China Sea
Seafloor
seismic ambient noise
Rayleigh wave dispersion
1 Introduction
Two-thirds of the Earth’s surface is covered by oceans, and
there is virtually no permanent seismic station at the ocean
floor. This poses significant challenges to seismologists
because marine seismic observation is so important to
global seismology [1–5]. For example, the subduction
zone, which is located on the boundary between ocean and
continent, is the most seismically active region in the
world; many marine geodynamic processes including
magmatic activities at Mid-Ocean Ridge (MOR), trans-
formation fault motions and hydrothermal events, are
accompanied and affected by earthquakes; seismic obser-
vation is also essential to practices like resource explora-
tion, oceanic lithosphere and deep mantle tomography.
Therefore, the lack of the ocean seismic observation not
just limits our understanding to earthquake itself, but also
make it harder to study the earth interior using seismic
waves generated by earthquakes [5]. However, due to the
high cost and various technique difficulties such as the poor
Chin. Sci. Bull. (2014) 59(33):4524–4535
coupling of the OBS with the seafloor, clock error and
unreliable recovery system, the OBS array observation is
still in its early stage, not to mention to build the global,
permanent ocean bottom seismic network even it was
planned over 10 years ago [3]. Domestically, while workers
have done several small-scale, short-term OBS deployment
experiments [6–10], we basically have been lagged behind
by our international peers given their recent efforts in this
field.
Supported by one of the NSFC major research programs,
South China Sea Deep, we carried out a relatively large-
scale deep ocean passive-source OBS array experiment.
The primary scientific goal is to reveal the lithospheric
structure beneath the extinct ridge (the Huanyan-Zhenbei
seamount chain) in the central basin of South China Sea
(SCS). The seamounts are believed to be generated by
magmas after the cessation of the MOR spreading at about
15.5 Ma [11–14]. Similar observations have been reported
globally in other abandoned ridges [15–18]. Therefore it
appears to be a common process, in which the magmatism
continues for many million years and seamounts are
formed even a ridge no longer spreads. Little is known
about this unique magmatic process and the lithospheric
structure beneath such ridges, especially constraints from
seismology. This experiment aims to deploy a passive-
source OBS array along the Huangyan-Zhenbei seamount
chain. Various seismic techniques including seismic
tomography, receiver function and anisotropy then can be
applied to earthquake data recorded by the OBS array, so
that the lithospheric structure and mechanisms of magma-
tism and seamount formation under the unique settings can
be investigated. On the other hand, the lithosphere of SCS
as a whole remains obscured [19, 20] due to a lack of
sufficient instrumentation for high resolution seismic
imaging. The dataset collected in this experiment, along
with future experiments planned in other parts of the SCS,
will provide the dataset for the deep structure imaging of
the whole SCS. In addition, this experiment will help to
gain experience in passive-source OBS array investigations
for Chinese marine seismology community, and the per-
formance of the domestic instruments can be tested and
compared with ones from aboard.
2 The experiment
In April 2012, supported by the Ship Time Sharing Pro-
gram of National Natural Science Foundation of China, we
used the R/V Dong Fang Hong 2 to deploy 18 passive-
source OBSs around the Huangyan-Zhenbei seamount
chain in the SCS’s central basin (Fig. 1). The locations of
OBS sites were designed for imaging the lithospheric
structure of the abandoned ridge using surface waves.
4525
Water depths at most sites are greater than 4000 m. We
used two types of instrument. Type 1, whose number is 15,
is the CMG-40T OBS developed by Guralp Inc., UK in
collaboration with Geosciences Azur France [21]. The rest
3 are domestic instruments called the I-4C OBS, which was
designed and built by Institute of Geology and Geophysics,
Chinese Academy of Sciences [7, 22]. Main specifications
of these two instruments are similar. For example, both
OBSs have a frequency response of 50 Hz–60 s, and a
deploying duration of 6–7 months; the maximum working
depths are 6000 m, and the battery packages for recording
and recovery are separated. However, their designs are
quite different (Fig. 2): CMG-40T has two spheres, with
one for Lithium battery package and the other for data
logger. The sensor is outside of the spheres to achieve a
better coupling between the seismometer and the seafloor.
The I-4C OBS, however, is a single sphere system with all
its components, including data logger, battery, sensor and
hydrophone, being positioned in one sphere. The coupling
is achieved through a detachable anchor. To ensure the
successful recovery, an extra release system, iXSea Oceano
2500, was included in the I-4C OBS in this experiment. As
a result, an empty sphere has to be attached to the anchor to
keep the OBS in proper position at the seafloor and to
provide flotation for the extra release in recovery (Fig. 2).
Because the deploying durations for both OBSs are 6–
7 months, our initial plan was to recover the OBSs in
October 2012. However, the severe sea-state at SCS in that
month hindered our plan. Several typhoons including Ga-
emi, Propiroon and Son-Tihn struck the SCS in October,
making it impossible to reach the central basin. The winter
weather at SCS is predictably even worse. Because the
batteries for the release units in both OBSs would not be
affected by the longer-than-designed deployment, we chose
to delay the recovery until the weather got better. In April
2013, about a year after the deployment, we performed the
recovery using the R/V Tian Long operated by Guangdong
Ocean University. The cruise lasted two weeks from April
18 to May 3. Fig. 1 shows locations of recovered and lost
OBSs. We successfully recovered 11 OBSs, 3 of which are
I-4C OBSs with the extra release system. All 7 lost OBSs
are the Guralp CMG-40T. The reason for the failures could
not be definitely determined. While there were two
instruments that completely lost track, 5 systems did
respond to the acoustic signals, and the ranging indicated
they were successfully ascending, but at extremely slow
speed. The speed is only about one-fifth of the normal
ascending speed. After eight to ten hours, they were again
completely gone. We tried to visually search for them at
sea surface by navigating in the region, but these efforts
were in vain. For those 5 OBSs that responded to the
acoustic signals, we speculate that one of the spheres was
probably leaking due to the high pressure at seafloor,
123
4526 Chin. Sci. Bull. (2014) 59(33):4524–4535

ea
17°(N)

aS
in
Ch
uth
HY15

So
HY01 HY16
HY02 HY17
16°
HY14 HY18
Huangyan-Zhenbei
Luzon
HY03
15° HY13

HY12
HY04
HY10 HY11
HY05
Recovered (Guralp)
14° HY09
Recovered (I-4C)
HY06 HY08
Failed (Guralp)
HY07

13°
114°(E) 115° 116° 117° 118° 119° 120°

−7000 −3500 0 3500 7000

Bathymetry/Topography (m)

Fig. 1 Locations of deployed and recovered OBS stations in the SCS passive-source OBS array experiment

(a) (b)
Sensor (underneath, Acoustic Empty sphere (for proper Main sphere (including
Data logger postion and offers flotation sensor, data logger, battery
between two spheres) release unit
for the extra release ) and hydrophone)

Battery

Hydrophone
Oceano 2500 release Anchor

Fig. 2 Main components of the two types of OBSs used in this experiment. a CMG-40T OBS from Guralp; b I-4C OBS from Institute of
Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences

reducing their buoyancy and thus the ascent speeds sig-
nificantly. As the instrument ascends slowly to the py-
cnocline, where the seawater density is reduced, the
buoyance could become zero. As a result, the OBS would
sustain at that depth, no longer float up.
It should be pointed out that, the failure of the recovery
system is a common problem frequently occurring in pas-
sive-source OBS experiments. Several recent experiments
in US, for example MARIANA [23], GLIMPSE [24] and
NoMelt [25] also suffered 10 % to 40 % failure rate after

123
Chin. Sci. Bull. (2014) 59(33):4524–4535 4527

(a) (b) (c)

40˚(N)

20˚(N) E3
E1
E2
E2
E3 20˚
30˚ 60˚ 90˚ 120˚ 150˚ 15˚ E1
E1

0˚ 10˚

110˚(E) 115˚ 120˚ 125˚

100˚(E) 120˚ 140˚

E1:2012.07.25.11.20 Mw:6.4 Filtered (0.02–0.1 Hz) E1: 2012.06.09.21.00 Mw:5.8 Unfiltered E1:2012.06.18.26.15 Mw:3.7 Unfiltered
HY02 z HY02 z
HY16 1

HY08 z
HY08 z
HY16 2
HY10 z
HY10 z

HY15 z
HY15 z HY16 z

HY16 z

HY16 z
HY17 z
HY16 h

HY17 z
HY18 z

HY18 z

E1:2012.06.09.21.00 Mw:5.8 Unfiltered E2:2012.06.03.07.45 Mw:3.3 Unfiltered

HY02 2
HY18 1
E2: 2012.08.14.02.59 Mw:7.7 Unfiltered HY08 2
HY08 1
HY10 2

HY15 2 HY18 2
HY08 2
HY16 2

HY17 2 HY18 z
HY08 z
HY18 2

HY08 h
E1:2012.06.09.21.00 Mw:5.8 Unfiltered
HY02 h

E3:2012.09.20.18.43 Mw:3.4 Unfiltered

HY08 h
HY16 1
E3: 2012.06.17.20.32 Mw:6.1 Filtered (0.02–0.1 Hz)
HY10 h
HY15 1
HY15 h

HY16 2
HY15 2 HY16 h

HY17 h
HY16 z
HY15 z
HY18 h

123
 4528
b Fig. 3 Distribution of selected global, regional and local earthquakes
and examples of their waveforms. a global earthquakes (Mw C 6.0);
b regional events (epicenter distance \30°) and 5.0 B Mw \ 6.0;
c local earthquakes (epicenter distance \10°, and Mw \ 5.0) . The
numbered blue circles in the top panel are the earthquake epicenters
for waveforms shown below, and the black triangles are the OBS
station locations. All waveforms are original unless indicated.
Markers after the station name, 1, 2, z and h, stand for two horizontal
components, the vertical component and hydrophone recordings,
respectively. Two vertical lines in each seismogram represent
predicted arrival times of P and S phases, respectively
about one year deployment. Nevertheless, this experiment
demonstrates that the reliability of recovery system in
Guralp CMG-40T needs to be improved despite the fact
that our deployment well exceeded the designed duration.
In addition to the relatively low recovery rate, this
experiment also suffered other data quality problems as all
OBS experiments do. Due to the poor coupling, we can
hardly identify any earthquake signals on recordings of two
CMG-40T OBSs (HY12 and HY13); one of the I-4C sites
(HY01) has a data gap lasting for months because of the
storage problem. Finally, two CMG-40T OBSs (HY02 and
HY10) have serious clock errors (Figs. 3 and 4).
3 Waveforms of earthquake signals
The recovered OBSs recorded continuous 3-component
waveforms and hydrophone recordings for over seven
Station HY02 time error
240
Tpick - Tpred (s)
180
120 Mean: 86.53 s; standard deviation: 2.67 s
60
0 HY10 are wrong (the shifts are so large that they can not be
100 150 200 250 300
Julian day of 2012
Station HY10 time error
240
Tpick - Tpred (s)
180
Mean: 193.20 s; standard deviation: 2.80 s
120
60
0 between the hand-picked (Tpick) and the predicted (Tpred)
100 150 200 250 300
Julian day of 2012
Fig. 4 Clock errors at OBS stations HY02 and HY10 as a function of
the earthquake origin time in Julian day. The vertical axis is the
difference between picked arrival time of P phase (Tpick) and
predicted arrival time (Tpred)
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Chin. Sci. Bull. (2014) 59(33):4524–4535
months. To assess quality of earthquake signals, we apply
basic waveform analysis techniques including band-pass
filtering and signal-to-noise ratio threshold selection, to
seismograms from all OBS recordings. Figure 3 shows the
selected earthquake locations with different magnitudes
and epicenter distances, as well as their waveform exam-
ples, from which we can see that most recovered OBSs
have fairly good data quality. Among the 11 recovered
instruments, there are 7–8 OBSs received 67 global
earthquakes (Mw C 6.0) and 108 regional events (epicen-
ter distance \30°, 6.0 [ Mw C 5.0) with high quality.
Main phases of these earthquake signals can be identified
in original recordings or through simple band-pass filtering
(Fig. 3a, b). For those events whose epicenter distance
greater than 20°, the clear and dispersed Rayleigh wave
trains in their waveforms are evident, and therefore they
can be used to image the oceanic lithosphere of the region.
In addition, the OBS array received 187 local earthquakes
(Mw \ 5.0, epicenter distance\10°) (Fig. 3c). Because the
array is close to the Manila trench, many deep small
earthquakes (Mw \ 4.0) show high quality 3-component
recordings (Fig. 3c). We note that, for free-fall OBS, an
effective coupling between seismometer and seafloor is
usually hard to achieve. Therefore, the data quality in the
horizontal component, in general, is inferior to that of the
vertical component [26–28]. Based on the quality analysis
for most OBS recordings in this experiment, the horizontal
and vertical components show comparable quality in cer-
tain period range (\15 s) (Fig. 3b). Only at periods greater
than *20 s, the horizontal components start to show
stronger noise and larger fluctuations, reflecting the
increased effects of tilt noise from bottom currents [27] and
their poorer coupling in the low frequency band. The hy-
drophone recordings at most OBS sites have similar quality
to those of seismometer’s vertical components at periods
less than 20 s (Fig. 3b).
As shown in Fig. 3a and b, clocks at stations HY02 and
350
referred to as time drift). These errors indicate the internal
clocks of CMG-40T are unstable, and their timings are
completely off without GPS corrections. To analyze these
errors, we selected 55 high quality seismograms with clear
first-arrival P phase, and hand-picked their P arrival times,
which then were compared with the predicted arrivals
based on the standard earth model (IASP91) and the source
parameters in the catalog. Figure 4 shows the difference
350 arrivals as a function of the earthquake origin time. The
clock errors for both stations appear to be stable during the
deployment, and their variances, with the standard devia-
tions being less than 3.0 s, can be explained by heteroge-
neities of the earth structure and errors of source
parameters in the catalog. The error at station HY10
Chin. Sci. Bull. (2014) 59(33):4524–4535
appears to occur one month after the deployment. Cer-
tainly, these errors will affect the tomography, which fully
depends on the travel times of the seismic waves. However,
if they are stable with time, we can add a station term into
the tomographic equation for each station to minimize their
influences [29]. We note that these errors have no effect on
several seismic techniques, including noise analyses,
anisotropy and receiver function analysis, as they are not
sensitive to the absolute timing.
4 Seafloor seismic noise analyses
Another factor contributing to the inferiority of OBS data
quality is the strong background noise originated primarily
from oceans [27, 30]. Characteristics of seafloor seismic
background noise, therefore, are essential to evaluating the
quality of OBS data. Additionally, noise characteristics can
also be used to reveal the seasonal and spatial variance of
the ocean currents [31].
We employed the Probability Density Function (PDF)
method [32] to analyze noise spectra of 3-component
recordings of OBS data. Unlike the traditional methods
[33, 34], the PDF method slices the continue recordings
into one-hour time series segments, and plots the distri-
bution of numerous seismic power spectral density (PSD)
as a variation of probability density function (PDF). This
approach has several advantages over the traditional
methods. First, it takes advantage of the fact that the
transient signals such as earthquakes, data gaps, clipping,
mass centering, etc. are low-probability events, and they
will not affect the high-probability characteristic of ambi-
ent seismic noise. Therefore, it is no need to painstakingly
screen the continuous waveforms to remove such signals.
Second, the PDF spectrum for a specific station presents a
range of PSDs instead of a single one, which provide much
more information. For example, we can easily retrieve the
statistical properties of the noise distribution such as the
mean or mode curve of the PDF spectrum.
Figure 5 shows the PDF plots of the noise spectra for
station HY02. As a standard approach, we compared the
noise of HY02 with the global average seismic back-
ground noise model NLNM and NHNM [33], which were
calculated primarily from land-based seismic stations.
Basically, the OBS station has relatively higher noise
level, especially in the low frequency band, where the
values are much higher than NHNM, indicating that
energy from oceans, in the forms of microseism and the
infragravity wave, has more direct impacts on OBSs than
on the land-based stations [30]. While in the band of
double frequency microseism (DFM: 2–10 s, peak at 7 s),
noise levels at all three components are close to or
slightly higher than NHNM, in the single frequency
4529
microseism band (SFM: 12–15 s peak at 14 s), on the
other hand, HY02 has much lower noise than NHNM, and
no SFM peak is observed. This can be explained by the
mechanism of SFM generation. Unlike DFM, SFM is
generated at coasts by the process of shoaling, in which
ocean waves interact with gradually shallow seafloor [31,
35]. Our OBS stations, however, are located on the sea-
floor of over 4,000 m depth; the effect of shoaling has
limited impacts on the deep ocean sites compared with
much larger DFM energy. Among components of HY02,
the two horizontal components are significantly noisier
than the vertical component, in particular for the low
frequency band with period greater than 15 s. This reflects
the coupling between different components of the sensor
with the seafloor is different, and horizontal components
of the free-fall OBS are harder to achieve the same level
of coupling as the vertical component because of the
stronger effect of bottom currents [27, 28].
To further reveal the noise characteristics of the SCS
seafloor, we compared the PDF spectra of HY02’s three
components with those of vertical components at different
environments including another deep sea station (H2O in
the Pacific), Island station (QIZ at Hainan island) and
inland station (KMI at Kunming, China) [31]. Figure 6
shows the mode curves of PDF spectra at stations from
those environments and three components of HY02. Both
OBS recordings (HY02 and H2O) have much higher noise
levels in the whole frequency band than island and inland
stations, reflecting oceans have more direct impacts on data
quality at OBS stations than those in other environments.
Noise spectra between two OBS stations show distinct
features as well, in particular, in the DFM band. While in
most of DFM band, noise levels are similar for H2O and
HY02, in the period range from 5–10 s, HY02 is signifi-
cantly less than H20, suggesting DFM in SCS has different
sources from the open ocean. Previous studies show [3,
36], there are two DFM peaks, at period ranges of 2–5 s
and 5–10 s respectively, for the Pacific seafloor stations.
They are corresponding to the DFM energy from local
sources and distant sources, respectively. The slump from
about 5 s in HY02 noise spectrum, therefore, likely suggest
that, unlike in the Pacific, the distant sources are not sig-
nificant in DFM generation at SCS, and wave interactions
at local or regional coasts and the circulation of the SCS
itself play far more important roles at this marginal sea.
This inference is consistent with our observations based on
stations around the SCS about the seasonal and spatial
variances of DFM [31]. In addition, in the period range of
5–10 s, both horizontal and vertical components show a
noise notch, and their noise levels are closer, suggesting
bottom currents have little effects on the horizontal com-
ponents at those periods, which is consistent with our
waveform analyses.
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4530
Fig. 5 PDF plots of Noise spectra of 3-component recordings at OBS station HY02. The black line is the mode curve of the PDF spectrum; 80 %
of all PSDs fall into the region bounded by two white dash lines, and gray solid lines represent high (NHNM) and low (NLNM) values of global
noise model [33]
5 Determining the orientation of OBS
Three-component ground-motion recordings are critical to
modern seismic techniques such as receiver functions and
anisotropy analysis. One problem with the free-fall OBS
investigation is the need to determine the sensor orientation so
that the two horizontal components can be properly rotated to
generate the radial and transverse components for each indi-
vidual earthquake. The traditional way to solve this problem is
to use airgun shots to generate signals with known polariza-
tions, and thus to determine the sensor orientation [37, 38].
However, this practice is costly and may not be always avail-
able. For example, in our case, the ship of the deploying cruise,
Dong Fang Hong 2, is not a typical geophysical R/V equipped
with an airgun. By the time of the recovery, the battery in OBS
for recording has been exhausted. Therefore, the airgun shots
do not work for our experiment, and we need to exploit
earthquake signals themselves to determine the orientations.
123
Chin. Sci. Bull. (2014) 59(33):4524–4535
Here we use the elliptical particle motion of Rayleigh waves,
along with the statistical analysis, to calculate the orientation
[39]. This robust method is computationally fast because
synthetic seismograms and accurate source parameters are not
needed. Application of this method to waveforms recorded on
land stations and synthetic waveforms confirms its reliability
[39]. In addition to determine the OBS orientation, this type of
analysis can also serve as an approach to evaluate the data
quality and the stability of the instrument performance.
Figure 7 shows the procedure of determining the ori-
entation of station HY08 using one earthquake. The par-
ticle motion of the Rayleigh wave causes a 90° phase shift
between the vertical and the radial components. Therefore,
the Hilbert transfer of the vertical component would be
linear with the radial component. By changing azimuths of
the two horizontal components, and cross-correlating the
corresponding radial component with the vertical, we can
find the azimuth with the maximum correlation coefficient,
Chin. Sci. Bull. (2014) 59(33):4524–4535 4531

40

HY02.BHZ Pacific (H2O)

60
HY02.BHE Island (QIZ)
HY02.BHN Inland (KMI)
80

NHNM
PSD (dB)

100

120

140

160
NLNM
180

10 -1 10 0 10 1 10 2
Period (s)
Fig. 6 Comparisons of mode curves of noise PDF spectra between OBS station HY02, stations at other environments, and the global seismic
noise model (NLNM and NHNM). Shadow zone marks the period range in which the noise level of HY02 is much less than H2O, and the
horizontal components have comparable level of noise as the vertical component

from which the orientation of the sensor can be calculated
relative to the earthquake azimuth (Fig. 7).
For each OBS station, we follow the procedures shown
in Fig. 7 for a number of earthquakes, and statistically
analyze all orientations obtained to find the optimal one.
Figure 8 shows the orientations as a function of the coef-
ficient for stations HY08 and HY16, which were obtained
by analyzing 36 and 65 earthquakes, respectively. Using
this method, we have successfully determined the optimal
orientations for 7 OBS stations. Because of the poor data
quality, the orientations of the rest 4 stations determined
from different earthquakes vary significantly. They there-
fore cannot be correctly orientated.
6 Rayleigh wave dispersion
Because ocean bottom seismic stations are usually sparse,
and the OBS recordings have low signal-to-noise ratio, it is
difficult to image the oceanic lithosphere using body wave
tomography, which requires dense data coverage. More
effective way to study the oceanic lithosphere, therefore, is to
exploit surface wave dispersion. By inversing for the group
velocity or phase velocity of Rayleigh waves, seismologists
can then derive the shear wave structure of the oceanic
lithosphere [24, 40, 41]. To explore the possibility to use the
dispersion of Rayleight waves collected in this OBS array
experiment, we did the frequency-time analysis (FTAN) [42]
for Rayleigh waves from typical earthquakes.
Figure 9 shows the original vertical component seismo-
gram from one earthquake and the filtered Rayleigh wave
trains using narrow frequency bands centered at a number of
periods. The back-azimuth of the earthquake is 238°, thus the
great circle path of the Rayleigh wave transverses the SCS
central basin. The clear, filtered Rayleigh wave waveforms at
periods from 18 to 100 s, and the FTAN plot in Fig. 9
demonstrate its group velocity is strongly frequency-
dependent. In this period range, the group and phase veloc-
ities are sensitive to the shear wave structure from the crust to
*200 km depth [24]. Therefore, they can be used to image
the oceanic lithosphere structure at those depths, which is
critical to understand the partial melting generation and the
magma transfer. Given the good back-azimuth distribution
of earthquakes (Fig. 3), the dataset from this experiment
should be able to image the oceanic lithospheric structure
beneath the fossil ridge in the central basin of SCS.
7 Discussion and conclusions
This OBS array experiment is a major passive-source OBS
deployment conducted in China. The number of instrument,

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4532 Chin. Sci. Bull. (2014) 59(33):4524–4535

(a) Station: HY08; EVT: 2012.08.10.18.37

Distance: 7774 km; BAZ: 38°; Filtered: 0.02–0.04 Hz

BHZ

BH2

BH1

0 100 200 300 400 500 600

(b) (c)
360 360

300 300
Orientation (°)

240 240

180 180 185°

120 120

60 60

0
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 -0.8 0 0.8
Time (s) Czr

Fig. 7 Determining the orientation of station HY08 based on Rayleigh wave polarization using one earthquake. a Filtered and windowed
3-componenet Rayleigh wave records; b Envelopes of the radial components calculated from varying orientations [39]; c Cross-correction
coefficients between the Hilbert transfer of vertical component and the radial components (Czr) as a function of the orientation. The orientation
corresponding to the maximum correction coefficient is 185°

deploying duration and seismic data collected all exceed
previous experiments. Although the recovery rate is less than
ideal, the experience learned from this experiment are
valuable for future passive-source OBS investigations in
SCS. For recovered OBSs, the earthquake data collected
have fairly good quality. The surface waves from teleseismic
and regional earthquakes will be able to image the litho-
sphere beneath the fossil ridge, and small local events can
offer the dataset for the Manila subduction zone studies. The
background noise analyses show that the noise level of OBS
recordings is higher than global average, and the horizontal
component is noisier than the vertical, suggesting current
impacts on horizontal components are more severe. Com-
parisons of the noise spectra among different environments
indicate the source for the SCS DFM is different from that in
open oceans. Finally, determination of the OBS orientations
and the Rayleigh wave FTAN analyses for typical earth-
quakes also demonstrate that the recovered OBSs recorded
good quality seismic data.
Based on the experience at sea and the data quality
analyses, we summarize lessons learned from this experi-
ment regarding the passive-source OBS experiment in SCS
as follows:
First, the greatest challenge in the long-term, free-fall
OBS array experiment is still the reliability of the OBS
recovery system. The performance of the OBS release
system certainly needs to be improved, but shortening the
deploying duration would probably reduce the chances of
instrument failure as well. The SCS is a marginal sea, and
the ship time cost is relatively low. Therefore, instead of
conducting a prolonged deployment, an alternative is to
shorten the duration of each deployment and conduct mu-
tli-phase experiments. This would accumulate enough
seismic data for studies at a manageable cost. Of course, a
safer way is to use the ROV or submersible to deploy and
recover the OBS, or even better, use the ocean bottom
cable system to permanently supply power and transfer
data for seafloor seismic observatory.

123
Chin. Sci. Bull. (2014) 59(33):4524–4535 4533

HY08
360
Orientation (°)
240

120

0
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 Mean Mc2 MAD
212° 218° 10°
Correlation coefficient Czr

HY16
120
Orientation (°)

-120

Mean Mc2 MAD

0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 16° 22.5° 13°
Correlation coefficient Czr

Fig. 8 Orientations of OBS stations HY08 and HY16 determined by 37 and 65 earthquakes, respectively. (Left) Orientations determined from
different earthquakes with varying maximum correction coefficients. (Right) Statistical analyses of the orientations determined from all events,
where Mc2 is the mean of orientations with Czr [ 0.5, and MAD stands for median absolute deviation [39]

(a) (b)
P S Rayleigh
EVT: 2012.06.23.04.34 Station: HY16
Unfiltered BAZ: 238.37° Distance :24.0311°
18 s 4.5 10

20 s

22 s 9
4.0
Group velocity (km/s)

25 s
29 s 8
33 s
3.5
40 s
7
50 s
67 s
3.0 6
77 s
91 s
100 s 5
400 600 800 1000 1200 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
Time (s) Period (s)
Fig. 9 Dispersion and FTAN analysis of a typical Rayleigh wave received at OBS station HY16 in SCS. a the original vertical component
seismogram and those filtered by narrow bands centered at periods from 18 s to 100 s. b FTAN analysis showing the dispersion curve of group
velocity for the Rayleigh wave shown in the left

Second, to correct the possible clock errors, airgun Because the time drifts at the clock may not be linear,
shots, which can generate signals with known origin time, doing this only in one of the cruises can hardly achieve the
should be used in both deploying and recovery cruises. goal. For experiments in SCS, where there are a lot of

123
4534
active-source seismic explorations, we can make use of
those shots to better constrain the instrument’s timing
repeatedly during the deployment of the OBS array.
Additionally, airgun shots are very helpful in determining
the orientation of the OBS.
Finally, given the expansive period of bad weather in
SCS, it is important to choose the right time windows to
conduct the experiment at sea. The SCS typhoon season
spans most of the year from late summer to next spring.
The best season to deploy or recover the instruments,
therefore, is usually from end of March to late summer,
especially in April. For instruments with half-year
deploying duration, it is optimal to deploy in September
and recover in next April. A better choice is to use
instruments with one-year duration so that both deploying
and recovering cruise can be conducted in April, ensuring a
good sea-state for both cruises, as well as collecting enough
seismic data.
Acknowledgments We thank the First Institute of Oceanography,
State Oceanic Administration and Institute of Geology and Geo-
physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences for providing us the instru-
ments; all crews at R/V Dong Fang Hong 2 and R/V Tian Long for
their indispensable work at sea, and two reviewers for their con-
structive reviews. This work was supported by National Natural
Science Foundation of China (91128209 and 40176019) and State
Key Laboratory of Marine Geology at Tongji University
(MG20130306).
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