Accelerometer transducer used for seismic recording

A method of acquiring seismic data comprising:

• sensing seismic energy with one or more sensor modules, wherein the one or more sensor modules comprise three or more accelerometers;
• recording seismic data indicative of the seismic energy using a seismic recorder;
• and
• determining a state-of-health for the sensor module comprising:
• operating the accelerometers;
• driving two of the accelerometers at a reference frequency;
• monitoring an output signal generated by an undriven accelerometer;
• and
• rotating through all the accelerometers;
• wherein monitoring an output signal comprises monitoring the magnitude of the reference frequency in the output signal of the undriven accelerometer to detect a malfunction of the sensor module.

A method of acquiring seismic data comprising:

• sensing seismic energy with one or more sensor modules, wherein the one or more sensor modules comprise one or more accelerometers;
• recording seismic data indicative of the seismic energy using a seismic recorder;
• and
• determining a state-of-health for the sensor module comprising:
• operating the accelerometers for a period of time;
• removing a DC offset from one or more output signals generated by the accelerometer to produce one or more resulting signals;
• transforming the resulting signals from the accelerometers from Cartesian coordinates into polar coordinates;
• and
• analyzing the polar coordinates;
• wherein analyzing the polar coordinates comprises analyzing one or more peak and root-mean-square amplitude results to indicate a malfunction of the sensor module or a noisy acquisition environment.