The record of seismic, hydroacoustic, and infrasonic waves is essential to detect, identify, and localize sources of both natural and anthropogenic origin. To guarantee traceability and inter-station comparability, as well as an estimation of the measurement uncertainties leading to a better monitoring of natural disasters and environmental aspects, suitable measurement standards and reliable calibration procedures of sensors, especially in the low-frequency range down to 0.01 Hz, are required. Most of all with regard to the design goal of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organisation’s International Monitoring System, which requires the stations to be operational nearly 100% of the time, the on-site calibration during operation is of special importance. The purpose of this paper is to identify suitable excitation sources and elaborate necessary requirements for on-site calibrations. We give an extensive literature review of a large variety of anthropogenic and natural sources of seismic, hydroacoustic, and infrasonic waves, describe their most prominent features regarding signal and spectral characteristics, explicitly highlight some source examples, and evaluate the reviewed sources with respect to requirements for on-site calibrations such as frequency bandwidth, signal properties as well as the applicability in terms of cost–benefit. According to our assessment, earthquakes stand out across all three waveform technologies as a good natural excitation signal meeting the majority of the requirements. Furthermore, microseisms and microbaroms allow a calibration at very low frequencies. We also find that in each waveform technique man-made controlled sources such as drop weights or air guns are in good agreement with the required properties, although limitations may arise regarding the practicability. Using these sources, procedures will be established allowing calibration without record interrupting, thereby improving data quality and the identification of treaty-related events.

地震、水声和次声波的记录对于探测、识别和定位自然和人为源的来源至关重要。为了保证可追溯性和站间可比性，以及对测量不确定性的估计，从而更好地监测自然灾害和环境方面，合适的测量标准和可靠的传感器校准程序，特别是在低至 0.01 的低频范围内赫兹，是必需的。最重要的是关于全面禁止核试验条约组织国际监测系统的设计目标，即要求站点几乎 100% 的时间运行，运行期间的现场校准尤为重要。本文的目的是确定合适的激励源并详细说明现场校准的必要要求。我们对地震、水声和次声波的各种人为和自然源进行了广泛的文献综述，描述了它们在信号和频谱特性方面最突出的特征，明确强调了一些源示例，并根据要求评估了审查的源用于现场校准，例如频率带宽、信号特性以及成本效益方面的适用性。根据我们的评估，地震在所有三种波形技术中都脱颖而出，作为满足大多数要求的良好自然激励信号。此外，微震和微气压允许在非常低的频率下进行校准。我们还发现，在每种波形技术中，人工受控源（例如落锤或气枪）与所需的特性非常吻合，尽管在实用性方面可能会出现限制。使用这些来源，将建立程序，允许在不中断记录的情况下进行校准，从而提高数据质量和条约相关事件的识别。