Infrasound stations

The IMS operates five stations in Europe to monitor infrasound activity as part of the verification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. This includes one station in Germany and one in Tunisia which are already operating and supply data continuously (I26DE since 1999, and I48TN since 2006). The other three stations in Norway, Portugal and Russia (I37NO, I42PO and I43RU) are still in the planning or construction phase and are currently scheduled to start operation in 2009 (I43RU) or 2010.  

The existing stations are not adequate to develop and test the effectiveness of automatic methods for the detection and localisation of acoustic sources with an explosive power of well below 1 kt. A European initiative is therefore currently looking at incorporating additional already existing infrasound stations to integrate them within a central European grid. The main contribution to this central European grid will be the stations in Sweden, the Netherlands and France. In addition to the IMS station I26DE, Germany has another station near Bremen with the code name IGADE. (In addition to these two stations, BGR also operates IMS station I27DE located at the AWI German Neumeyer research station in the Antarctic.)

All of the infrasound stations consist of arrays comprising at least three receivers. These stations operate in the same way as antennae and can be used as direction finders to locate the source of the sound waves. Arrays therefore have advantages compared to single stations because if an event is registered at two stations the source location can be immediately determined by cross-bearing.

European IMS stations showing the already operating stations marked with a solid triangle. Source: BGR

Stations within the Central European network of which only I26DE is an IMS station. Source: BGR