Cross-correlation analysis of three-component seismic recordings

Seismic wave is a three dimensional vector wavefield， the single component recordings are actually the projection of particle motion along certain directions. Based on the single component seismogram cross-correlation formula， this paper presents a novel simple solution which is suitable for the calculation of three-component seismogram cross-correlation， and the effectiveness of this new approach is verified via a practical case from the aftershock sequence of 2008 Wenchuan M_S8.0 earthquake. Compared with single component seismogram cross-correlation， the new approach can obtain a global optimized result more reasonably and erase the discrepancy between different components in the work of template waveform matching. Also this new formula can take advantage of the congenerous between different components， suppress the ambient seismic noise effectively， and its rationality was demonstrated in theory. This new approach requires rather small computations as its simplicity in principles and procedures， which is suitable for the seismic data processing in the current era of “big data”.