Trends in geophysical instrumentation

Abstract

Geometrics, a world leader in near-surface geophysical instrumentation, celebrated its 50th anniversary last year. This gives us a good opportunity to reflect on the history of the geophysics industry and the challenges an instrument manufacturer has faced. The role of an instrument manufacturer has changed significantly since Geometrics opened its doors. Obviously, the nature of electronics design has changed considerably, while the role of an instrument manufacturer evolved along with it. The design of geophysical system required discrete analog designs in the early days, then discrete digital designs. A/D converters, for example, used to be custom made for high performance. Now, high speed, wide dynamic range converters are readily available. Similarly, the digital acquisition system as a whole used to be purpose-built by manufacturers in our industry. Next, PC backplanes were used, and now, PCs, notebooks, or even smartphones are connected to the instrument itself. This means that in past times there was significant opportunity for innovation and a steep barrier to entry in building instrumentation that had the required specification. This is no longer the case. The opportunity for innovation is no longer in the challenge of solving the difficulties of the electronics design, but rather in how quickly the latest consumer techniques and platforms can be integrated into field-rugged instrumentation. Another challenge of the geophysics industry has actually not changed as much. Geophysical measurements require a high level of expertise in order to understand the data. This is due to the fact that none of the geophysical techniques in common usage identify the actual objects of interest. They are either sensitive to many other things (UXO vs scrap metal, for example) or sensitive to the structures which often correlate to the presence of materials of interest. The measurements must be carefully interpreted in order to present an answer. Since there are few people with the skill necessary for interpretation, the market for geophysical instrumentation has remained relatively small. In order to grow the geophysical market, we must look to other industries where our expertise can be used. There are many such markets (civil engineering, security, military, to name a few) that indeed have used geophysical techniques in many cases, but those techniques have not reached broad acceptance. However, with the greater processing power now made possible through the increased performance of electronic hardware, and the greater software power more recently available through AI techniques, for example, we now have a much greater ability to bring robust solutions to market. This new revolution in software capability will enable a much greater growth in the usage of geophysical techniques over the next 50 years!