Repeatability study of helicopter-borne electromagnetic data

Helicopter-borne electromagnetic (EM) responses depend very much upon the altitude and plan-view flight path, especially when the resistivity of the terrain's materials varies laterally and/or vertically. Spatially consistent flight paths are required for repeatability analysis of the EM data. Caution should be used in examining the repeatability of the EM data because poor repeatability could result from spatially inconsistent flight paths. However, the apparent resistivity converted from the EM responses is virtually independent of the sensor altitude and directly reflects variations in the resistivity. Therefore, more meaningful repeatability analyses are achieved if the apparent resistivity is used instead of the EM response itself. We have analyzed 32 flights over a control line by using the EM amplitude, the phase, and the apparent resistivity. Our results show that the crosscorrelation for all 496 paired combinations of flights is better for the apparent resistivity than for the EM amplitude or phase. The apparent-resistivity data have average correlation coefficients from 0.89 to 0.94 as the frequency increases, whereas the amplitude and the phase data have average correlation coefficients from 0.78 to 0.85 without obvious frequency dependency.