Rotation sensing without rotation sensors for land seismic

Over the past 15 years, rotation sensing has emerged as a prominent research focus in land seismic acquisition (Schmelzbach et al., 2018). Its primary applications include the attenuation of coherent noise - most notably the local suppression of ground roll (Allouche et al., 2015) and scattered noise (Edme et al., 2013). In addition, rotational measurements have shown value in characterizing near-surface properties (Allouche & Øzdemir, 2019) and enabling advanced wavefield interpolation techniques (Muyzert et al., 2012; Khatami & Ravasi, 2025).

Despite these promising results from field experiments, rotation sensing has yet to be adopted in commercial land seismic surveys. The barrier remains largely economic: dedicated rotational sensors are costly, and low-cost, field-ready alternatives have not been widely available.

In this paper, STRYDE reviews both direct and indirect approaches to rotation sensing and examine whether the emergence of compact, cost-effective 1C accelerometer-based nodal systems -such as those now used in modern high-density acquisition - could provide a viable pathway toward making rotation sensing commercially and operationally feasible for onshore seismic exploration.