Aspen is a distributed open-architecture system designed to provide a comprehensive set of environmental monitoring data and processed information. Aspen uses the latest developments in sensors, digitizers, communication and computer networking technologies as well as recent findings in earth sciences research. It is ideal for monitoring seismic events from local, regional, national and global networks and arrays.
The concept of open architecture is central to the Aspen environment because it will not only support your current requirements but also can be easily adapted to meet your future needs.
By utilizing commercial, off-the-shelf products from high-volume manufacturers, Aspen provides the greatest network reliability, scalability, flexibility, security, and lowest cost-of-ownership.
At remote sites, the Aspen Field Station consists of the transducers, Kinemetrics and/or Quanterra data-logger and the communication interface. The data-logger converts analog signals from the transducers to digital format and time stamps the data using the GPS receiver for all channels.
The communication interface transfers continuous and/or on-demand data to the designated Aspen Data Centers using standard duplex serial interface or standard TCP/IP Level 4 protocol over radio, telephone or satellite communication links.
The Aspen data center consists of the Access Server and the Antelope Software Package.
The Access Server merges all incoming and outgoing data streams and forwards them to the data Local Area Network (LAN) from which they are distributed to the appropriate workstations using a TCP/IP socket connection.
The Antelope consists of two major sub-systems:
• ARTS, the Antelope Real-Time System• ASIS, the Antelope Seismic Information System.
The Antelope Real-Time Systemprovides full functionality for seismic network and array operations and control. This includes real time data acquisition to non-volatile disk ring-buffer, interactive control of field equipment, system state of health monitoring, and real time automated data processing (detection, picking, seismic event association, seismic event location, archiving). It also offers interactive and batch processing, information system functions, automated distribution of raw data and processed results, batch mode seismic array processing and a powerful development toolkit for extending and customizing the system.
The Antelope Seismic Information System uses the relational database (RDBMS) formalism and the CSS v. 3.0 schema for information organization. The ASIS comes with all the tools to review the seismic information.
Antelope runs on the Sun Microsystems’ Solaris operating system on both SPARC and Intel architectures. In addition to providing specific functionality for seismic monitoring systems, Antelope provides a robust and versatile substratum of generic functions that can be used to support other non-seismic monitoring applications.
- Open-architecture modular design concepts throughout
- Distributed real-time and on-demand data acquisition and processing capability
- Distributed real-time system monitoring and control capability
- Comprehensive automated seismic event information in near real-time
- Network size independent - system scales only with hardware used
- Records real-time data to non-volatile disk ring buffer
- Ring buffer size limited only by maximum file size
- Client/server TCP/IP paradigm
- Supports all telemetry with standard duplex serial interfaces or standard TCP/IP Level 4 protocol over multiple physical interfaces
- Unique on-line and off-line processing tools
- Offers tools with Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) for rapid access to earthquake information
- Rich development toolkit
- Local, Regional, National and Global Seismic Networks and Arrays