Properties of noise cross-correlation functions obtained from a distributed acoustic sensing array at Garner Valley, California

A field test that was conducted at Garner Valley, California, on 11 and 12 September 2013 using distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) to sense ground vibrations provided a continuous overnight record of ambient noise. The energy of ambient noise was concentrated between 5 and 25 Hz, which falls into the typical traffic noise frequency band. A standard procedure (Bensen et al., 2007) was adopted to calculate noise cross-correlation functions (NCFs) for 1-min intervals. The 1-min-long NCFs were stacked using the time-frequency domain phase-weighted-stacking method, which significantly improves signal quality. The obtained NCFs were asymmetrical, which was a result of the nonuniform distributed noise sources. A precursor appeared on NCFs along one segment, which was traced to a strong localized noise source or a scatterer at a nearby road intersection. NCF for the radial component of two surface accelerometers along a DAS profile gave similar results to those from DAS channels. We calculated the phase velocity dispersion from DAS NCFs using the multichannel analysis of surface waves technique, and the result agrees with active-source results. We conclude that ambient noise sources and the high spatial sampling of DAS can provide the same subsurface information as traditional active-source methods.