Development of a low-cost cableless geophone and its application in a micro-seismic survey at an abandoned underground coal mine

Due to the urbanization in China, some building construction sites are planned on areas above abandoned underground mines, which pose a concern for the stability of these sites and a critical need for the use of reliable site investigations. The array-based surface wave method has the potential for conducting large-scale field surveys at areas above underground mines. However, the dense deployment of conventional geophones requires heavy digital cables. On the other hand, the bulky and expensive standard stand-alone seismometers limit the number of stations for the array-based surface wave measurements. Therefore, this study developed a low-cost cableless geophone system for the array-based surface wave survey. A field case study using this novel cableless geophone system was conducted at an abandoned underground mine site in China to validate its functionality.