Frequency Dependence and Zero Crossover Effects in SQUID Based TDEM Measurements: Peculiarities or Facts?

TL;DR

This study investigates frequency dependence and zero crossover effects in SQUID-based TDEM measurements, revealing their impact on geophysical exploration and highlighting the high sensitivity of SQUIDs for deep underground conductivity analysis.

Contribution

The paper presents a developed SQUID-based TDEM system and field survey results that demonstrate the frequency-dependent decay and zero crossover effects in real geophysical conditions.

Findings

Decay transients can reach negative values in certain layered terrains.

Decay transients are highly dependent on the transmitter's base frequency.

Zero crossover effects occur at late decay times, revealing subsurface features.

Abstract

In this paper we analyzed the two peculiarities frequently observed in SQUID magnetometer applications in TDEM based geophysical exploration such as the decay of the ground response is frequency dependent and sign reversal or zero-crossover effect at late decay times. A SQUID based TDEM system has been developed, characterized with prototype transmitter and field survey has been performed. Since the laboratory tests were done in a relatively noisy environment, the frequency dependence and the sign reversal effects have not been observed but the same have clearly been observed in the field survey. In the field survey, the decay transients surprisingly reached negative values in a terrain where a thin conducting layer is sandwiched between thick upper and thin lower resistive layers and the decay transients were highly dependent on base frequency of the transmitter waveforms. The major advantage of using the SQUIDs in TDEM applications is its extremely high sensitivity maintained at low frequencies. Therefore one can investigate the conductivity of the layers buried in deep below the surface of the ground. Nevertheless, the decay transients recorded with SQUID provided the information of the conducting layer along with an unexpected zero cross-over at later decay times. In this article, we describe the possible reasons for these peculiarities based on the observations made by various researchers, understanding of the TDEM concepts, behavior of the instruments and various experiments performed by us.