Time Base Error Characterization of a Data Recorder Aimed For Marine Seismology

In many marine geophysical applications, the quality of acquired data is dependent on the instrument precise timing. In marine seismic refraction experiments, ocean bottom seismometers (OBS) are used to collect data for several months. This paper presents the characterization of the time base error of the data recorder based on 24 bits analog-to-digital converters and Compactflash memory cards, designed and built for our new ocean bottom seismometer (OBS), now under construction. The characterization tests are based on the IEEE Std 1057-Standard For Digitizing Waveform Recorders where the result of the two methods given have been compared and an upper bound for the aperture uncertainty of the sampling instants has been calculated.