A Family of Seismometers with Capacitive Transducers

A family of seismometers has been developed with capacitive transducers that convert the relative displacement between the inertial mass and the base of the instrument into an electric signal. These high-sensitivity seismometers have a unified electronic circuit; they can be rather easily manufactured, installed, and calibrated, which makes mass production of these instruments look promising. To assess the possibility of using these seismometers as substitutes for imported counterparts, a comparative analysis was carried out to study the performance of a portable short-period SM-3E broadband digital seismometer and imported seismometers of the same type. Seismic recordings of these instruments were statistically analyzed in the time and frequency domains.