Azimuth correction for passive surface wave dispersion based on polarization analysis

Summary Passive surface-wave methods have found extensive application in near-surface investigation due to their benefits of low costs, noninvasiveness, and high accuracy. Linear arrays are usually adopted in urban environments for their convenience and efficiency. However, the distribution of noise sources in densely populated urban areas varies rapidly in time and space, making it challenging to estimate accurate dispersion spectra using a linear array. To solve this problem, we propose a polarization analysis-based azimuthal correction method. We first obtain the azimuth of each segment by calculating the correlation coefficient of three-component ambient noise data. The normalized correlation coefficient is then applied for quality control to select reliable segments. For selected segments, the overestimated velocity caused by directional sources are corrected to obtain accurate dispersion spectra. A synthetic test is conducted to demonstrate the feasibility of our method. Compared with the dispersion spectra obtained without any correction, the dispersion spectra obtained following the suggested scheme are more consistent with the theoretical dispersion curves. Two real-world examples at crossroads show the superiority of the proposed technique in obtaining higher-resolution dispersion energy and more accurate phase velocities. In addition, our approach can attenuate the artifacts and improve the dispersion measurements.