Joint inversion of P-wave velocity and Vp–Vs ratio: imaging the deep structure in NE Japan

A new inversion scheme is presented to obtain three-dimensional images of P-wave velocity（Vp） and P–S-wave velocity ratio（Vp/Vs） using P- and S-phase pairs, i.e., the same source–receiver pairs for the P- and S-wave arrival-time data. The S-wave velocity（Vs） was separately inverted using the S-phase arrival times. The earthquake hypocenters were simultaneously relocated in the joint inversion. The method considers the Vp/Vs anomaly as a model parameter in the inversion. The proposed method thus provides a more robust calculation of the Vp/Vs anomaly than the conventional method of dividing Vp by Vs. The method also takes into account the ray path difference between P- and S-waves, and hence yields a less biased Vp–Vs ratio than the method of inverting S–P-wave data for Vp and Vp/Vs anomalies under the assumption of identical P and S ray paths. The proposed method was used to image the crust and upper mantle in northeastern（NE） Japan taking advantage of a large number of high-quality arrival times of P- and S-wave source–receiver pairs. The inverted structures suggest that the subducting slab of the Pacific plate is an inclined zone of high-Vp and Vs anomalies with low Vp/Vs perturbation. The mantle wedge is characterized by low-Vp, low-Vs, and high-Vp/Vs anomalies at shallow depths beneath active volcanoes. These features are also observed at greater depths in the back-arc region. Although these features have been previously reported, the Vp/Vs anomaly pattern obtained in this study shows much less scatter and is much better correlated with the seismic velocity perturbation patterns than previous studies. The proposed method can be used, in conjunction with velocity anomaly patterns, to quantify thermal processes associated with plate subduction.

Passive source range estimation with a single receiver in shallow water

An approach for long-range passive impulsive source ranging with a single receiver in shallow water is proposed, which utilizes the frequency spectrum of the warped signal autocor- relation function via warping transform. For an ideal waveguide, there are invariable frequency features both in the frequency spectrum of the warped signal corresponding to modal cut-off frequencies and the warped signal autocorrelation function due to modal interference. These intrinsic frequency features can be used to passive source ranging. So, the approximate rela- tionship between the frequency of warped signal at an unknown source range and the intrinsic frequency extracted by the time warping transform is derived. These rules can be generalized to an actual shallow water waveguide. Employing an acoustic model to offer the invariable frequency spectrum features, the impulsive signal data collected by a single hydrophone in the North Yellow Sea in December 2011 are analyzed to verify the proposed source ranging ap- proach. The estimated ranges are in good agreement with the ranges measured by GPS, and the mean relative error of range estimation is less than 10%.

Performance analysis of source ranging by use of virtual receiver technique under different frequency bands

The traditional matched field processing localization need complicated computation to get the replica field and has high dependence on environment parameters and acoustic field model. To overcome the shortcoming, virtual receiver technique is used for source ranging. A virtual receiver is constructed by correlating the two signals of the guide source and the objective source received by a vertical line array. Then, the slope of the interference striation of the virtual field is estimated using relevant signal processing method. Combining with the waveguide invariant/3, the range of the objective source is determined. Through the numerical simulations and data processing collected from the experiment carried out in the South China Sea in 2004, the virtual receiver technique for broadband source ranging under the slope- bottom shallow water environment is discussed. As the frequency increases, the frequency bands should be broadened to obtain complete interference striation for good ranging results. In data processing, the receiving array spacing is too large to promise the orthogonality of the modes as the frequency increases and ranging results become worse.