Large equipment at a location
ESG Institute

How a Microseismic System Works

A microseismic system is made up of a number of unique components including:

1. Sensors: Uniaxial and triaxial accelerometers and/or geophones.

2. Junction Box - (JB): A NEMA-4 enclosure that houses essential acquisition and communications equipment including the Paladin® digital seismic recorder which serves as the backbone of ESG’s microseismic data acquisition system.

3. Ethernet communication: Fiber (underground) or radio (surface) for reliable, full waveform data transfer.

4. Acquisition PC: Acquisition Server, watchdog, optional large external storage drive and uninterruptable power supply (UPS).

5. Processing PC: Fast multi-core Processor and powerful dedicated video card.

Seismic sensors, including geophones and accelerometers, detect seismic energy released by microseismic events. These analog signals are transmitted via copper cables to the ESG Paladin® digital seismic recorder housed inside a Junction Box.

Each ESG Paladin® is a web-enabled digital seismic recorder equipped with its own IP address to facilitate identification, remote monitoring and calibration.  Once the signal has been registered and digitized by the  Paladin®, it is transmitted via Ethernet communication or other network (i.e. fibre, radio) to the Acquisition computer. In the case of underground mines, acquisition computers are typically housed on the surface within an office setting.

ESG’s Hyperion Network Acquisition Software (HNAS) is installed on the Acquisition computer and provides continuous, full waveform data acquisition and triggering in real-time. The full ESG Hyperion Seismic Software (HSS) is then installed on a separate Processing computer, and provides a platform for data processing.  Processing may include event identification, location and magnitude evaluation, and visualization using ESG's web-enabled 3D interactive visualization module to view source parameters within 3D mine view.

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