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lower power that will be more appropriate for rugged<br />

field programs and long-term deployments. Both new<br />

manufacturing techniques and fundamental new designs<br />

have been explored. In spite of some refinements in design<br />

and improvements in the manufacturing process (resulting<br />

in modest improvements in ruggedness and reliability),<br />

the approximately 30-year-old fundamental mass-springfeedback<br />

design has not been changed. There may be new<br />

design options on the horizon for rugged, short-period (few<br />

seconds) sensors, but it appears unlikely that there will be<br />

significant breakthroughs in the intermediate and longperiod<br />

range (tens to hundreds of seconds). In this environment,<br />

PASSCAL will continue to explore the best means<br />

to maintain and repair the current designs and work with<br />

PIs to develop procedures for proper care of sensors during<br />

shipping and in the field.<br />

BB Sensors<br />

80<br />

70<br />

60<br />

50<br />

40<br />

30<br />

20<br />

10<br />

0<br />

Broadband Sensor Purchase History, NSF & DOE<br />

Median Age of BB Sensor in 2007 = 10 years<br />

1989<br />

1990<br />

1991<br />

1992<br />

1993<br />

1994<br />

1995<br />

1996<br />

1997<br />

1998<br />

Year<br />

DOE award<br />

1999<br />

2000<br />

2001<br />

2002<br />

2003<br />

2004<br />

2005<br />

Figure 42. Broadband sensor purchase history from NSF and<br />

DOE funds. The median age of the PASSCAL broadband sensor in<br />

2007 was 10 years. Most broadband sensors purchased are still in<br />

service today.<br />

2006<br />

2007<br />

Future Trends<br />

The composition of the PASSCAL instrument pool and its<br />

modes of field and software support evolve as new scientific<br />

opportunities arise and as advanced technologies develop.<br />

Sustaining state-of-the art instrumentation thus entails<br />

adopting new technologies, notably in communications,<br />

power sources, and sensors, as they become available and<br />

pursuing the development of increasingly lower-power and<br />

lower-cost instrumentation.<br />

Recent experience with the USArray has demonstrated<br />

that real-time data recovery increases data quality and data<br />

return while optimizing field resources. However, the cost for<br />

operating a real-time network is associated with significant<br />

service fees and data center infrastructure that still precludes<br />

its use in the typical PASSCAL experiment. The technology is<br />

continuing to progress, and we expect real-time communications<br />

will be increasingly feasible for more experiments in the<br />

near future. The funding of recurring communications fees is<br />

an issue that will need to be worked out with PIs and NSF.<br />

The new generation data loggers that comprise the PASSCAL<br />

pool (REF TEK RT130s and Quanterra Q330s) are all<br />

equipped with modern communications protocols. These<br />

systems have been configured to work well with modern<br />

radio, cell phone, IRIDIUM, and VSAT communications<br />

systems. Although setting up a real-time seismic network<br />

in a foreign country is still very challenging, worldwide<br />

communications are advancing and becoming standardized<br />

so rapidly that we expect that real-time communications for<br />

overseas projects will also be realistic in the near future. But,<br />

here again, the budgeting of communications costs will be an<br />

issue. We are also watching with interest several initiatives in<br />

the community for “mote” or other small-scale, self-organizing<br />

sensor networks that may eventually offer other robust<br />

telemetry options in smaller scale experiment situations<br />

such as volcano or glacier seismology.<br />

A promising integration into the PASSCAL mode of operations<br />

is the development of power and telemetry systems<br />

suitable for Antarctic deployments. The use of a combined<br />

solar, wind, and lithium battery system matched with a verylow-power<br />

seismic system is currently being implemented<br />

in two deep-field projects. The knowledge and experience<br />

acquired in support of deployments in such extreme environments<br />

permeates into the rest of the program, and helps<br />

to improve support throughout.<br />

51

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