N-th root slant stack for enhancing weak seismic signals

Seismic imaging of complicated underground structures with severe surface undulation(i.e.,double complex areas)is challenging owing to the difficulty of collecting the very weak reflected signal.Enhancing the weak signal is difficult even with state-of-the-art multi-domain and multidimensional prestack denoising techniques.This paper presents a time–space dip analysis of offset vector tile(OVT)domain data based on theτ-p transform.The proposed N-th root slant stack method enhances the signal in a three-dimensionalτ-p domain by establishing a zero-offset time-dip seismic attribute trace and calculating the coherence values of a given data sub-volume(i.e.,inline,crossline,time),which are then used to recalculate the data.After sorting,the new data provide a solid foundation for obtaining the optimal N value of the N-th root slant stack,which is used to enhance a weak signal.The proposed method was applied to denoising low signal-to-noise ratio(SNR)data from Western China.The optimal N value was determined for improving the SNR in deep strata,and the weak seismic signal was enhanced.The results showed that the proposed method effectively suppressed noise in low-SNR data.

An automatic seismic signal detection method based on fourth-order statistics and applications

Real-time, automatic, and accurate determination of seismic signals is critical for rapid earthquake reporting and early warning. In this study, we present a correction trigger function（CTF） for automatically detecting regional seismic events and a fourth-order statistics algorithm with the Akaike information criterion（AIC） for determining the direct wave phase, based on the differences, or changes, in energy, frequency, and amplitude of the direct P- or S-waves signal and noise. Simulations suggest for that the proposed fourth-order statistics result in high resolution even for weak signal and noise variations at different amplitude, frequency, and polarization characteristics. To improve the precision of establishing the S-waves onset, first a specific segment of P-wave seismograms is selected and the polarization characteristics of the data are obtained. Second, the S-wave seismograms that contained the specific segment of P-wave seismograms are analyzed by S-wave polarization filtering. Finally, the S-wave phase onset times are estimated. The proposed algorithm was used to analyze regional earthquake data from the Shandong Seismic Network. The results suggest that compared with conventional methods, the proposed algorithm greatly decreased false and missed earthquake triggers, and improved the detection precision of direct P- and S-wave phases.

Characteristics and interpretation of the seismic signal of a field-scale landslide dam failure experiment

Outburst floods caused by breaches of landslide dams may cause serious damages and loss of lives in downstream areas; for this reason the study of the dynamic of the process is of particular interest for hazard and risk assessment. In this paper we report a field-scale landslide dam failure experiment conducted in Nantou County, in the central of Taiwan.The seismic signal generated during the dam failure was monitored using a broadband seismometer and the signal was used to study the dam failure process.We used the short-time Fourier transform(STFT) to obtain the time–frequency characteristics of the signal and analyzed the correlation between the power spectrum density(PSD) of the signal and the water level. The results indicate that the seismic signal generated during the process consisted of three components: a low-frequency band(0–1.5 Hz), an intermediate-frequency band(1.5–10 Hz) and a highfrequency band(10–45 Hz). We obtained the characteristics of each frequency band and the variations of the signal in various stages of the landslide dam failure process. We determined the cause for the signal changes in each frequency band and its relationship with the dam failure process. The PSD sediment flux estimation model was used to interpret the causes of variations in the signal energy before the dam failure and the clockwise hysteresis during the failure. Our results show that the seismic signal reflects the physical characteristics of the landslide dam failure process. The method and equipment used in this study may be used to monitor landslide dams and providing early warnings for dam failures.

Analysis of frequency shifting in seismic signals using Gabor-Wigner transform

A hybrid time-frequency method known as Gabor-Wigner transform (GWT) is introduced in this paper for examining the time-frequency patterns of earthquake damaged buildings. GWT is developed by combining the Gabor transform (GT) and Wigner-Ville distribution (WVD). GT and WVD have been used separately on synthetic and recorded earthquake data to identify frequency shifting due to earthquake damages, but GT is prone to windowing effect and WVD involves ambiguity function. Hence to obtain better clarity and to remove the cross terms (frequency interference), GT and WVD are judiciously combined and the resultant GWT used to identify frequency shifting. Synthetic seismic response of an instrumented building and real-time earthquake data recorded on the building were investigated using GWT. It is found that GWT offers good accuracy for even slow variations in frequency, good time-frequency resolution, and localized response. Presented results confirm the efficacy of GWT when compared with GT and WVD used separately. Simulation results were quantified by the Renyi entropy measures and GWT shown to be an adequate technique in identifying localized response for structural damage detection.

Seismic signal recognition using improved BP neural network and combined feature extraction method

Seismic signal is generally employed in moving target monitoring due to its robust characteristic.A recognition method for vehicle and personnel with seismic signal sensing system was proposed based on improved neural network.For analyzing the seismic signal of the moving objects,the seismic signal of person and vehicle was acquisitioned from the seismic sensor,and then feature vectors were extracted with combined methods after filter processing.Finally,these features were put into the improved BP neural network designed for effective signal classification.Compared with previous ways,it is demonstrated that the proposed system presents higher recognition accuracy and validity based on the experimental results.It also shows the effectiveness of the improved BP neural network.

Properties of an improved Gabor wavelet transform and its applications to seismic signal processing and interpretation

This paper presents an analytical study of the complete transform of improved Gabor wavelets （IGWs）, and discusses its application to the processing and interpretation of seismic signals. The complete Gabor wavelet transform has the following properties. First, unlike the conventional transform, the improved Gabor wavelet transform （IGWT） maps time domain signals to the time-frequency domain instead of the time-scale domain. Second, the IGW＇s dominant frequency is fixed, so the transform can perform signal frequency division, where the dominant frequency components of the extracted sub-band signal carry essentially the same information as the corresponding components of the original signal, and the sub- band signal bandwidth can be regulated effectively by the transform＇s resolution factor. Third, a time-frequency filter consisting of an IGWT and its inverse transform can accurately locate target areas in the time-frequency field and perform filtering in a given time-frequency range. The complete IGW transform＇s properties are investigated using simulation experiments and test cases, showing positive results for seismic signal processing and interpretation, such as enhancing seismic signal resolution, permitting signal frequency division, and allowing small faults to be identified.

Singularity detection of the thin bed seismic signals with wavelet transform

The location of singularities may be detected by local maxima of the wavelet transform modulus. The digital modeling and focusing process to wavelet transform of the reflecting seismic signals have been done. It has been found that the locations of singularities after wavelet transform are only affected by two factors, their original locations and the seismic wavelet length, which says it does not matter with what shape the wavelet will be. The wavelet length can be determined according to the wavelet transform results and be eliminated thereafter so that we are able to detect thin bed seismic signal with resolution of l/32 wavelength. The singularities have been recovered with improved resolution of the seismic section by real data processing.

Joint Time-Frequency Analysis of Seismic Signals:A Critical Review

This paper presents an evaluation of time-frequency methods for the analysis of seismic signals.Background of the present work is to describe,how the frequency content of the signal is changing in time.The theoretical basis of short time Fourier transform,Gabor transform,wavelet transform,S-transform,Wigner distribution,Wigner-Ville distribution,Pseudo Wigner-Ville distribution,Smoothed Pseudo Wigner-Ville distribution,Choi-William distribution,Born-Jordan Distribution and cone shape distribution are presented.The strengths and weaknesses of each technique are verified by applying them to a particular synthetic seismic signal and recorded real time earthquake data.

Seismic Signal and Data Analysis of Rock Media with Vertical Anisotropy

This paper is concerned with anisotropic effects on seismic data and signal analysis for transversely isotropic rock media with vertical anisotropy. It is understood that these effects are significant in many practical applications, e.g. earthquake forecasting, materials exploration inside the Earth’s crust, as well as various practical works in oil industry. Under the framework of the most accepted anisotropic media model (i.e. VTI media, transverse isotropy with a vertical axis symmetry), with applications of a set of available anisotropic rock parameters for sandstone and shale, we have performed numerical calculations of the anisotropic effects. We show that for rocks with strong anisotropy, the induced relative depth error can be significantly large. Nevertheless, with an improved understanding of the seismic-signal propagation and proper data processing, the error can be reduced, which in turn may enhance the probability of forecasting accurately the various wave propagations inside the Earth’s crust, e.g. correctly forecasting the incoming earthquakes from the center of the Earth.

Weak Seismic Signal Extraction Based on the Curvelet Transform

Seismic signal denoising is a key step in seismic data processing.Airgun signals are easy to be interfered with by noise when it travels a long distance due to the weak energy of active source signal of the airgun.Aiming to solve this problem,and considering that the conventional Curvelet transform threshold processing method does not use the seismic spectrum information,we independently process the Curvelet scale layer corresponding to valid data based on the characteristics of the Curvelet transform of multi-scale,multi-direction and capable of expressing the sparse seismic signals in order to fully excavate the information features.Combined with the Curvelet adaptive threshold denoising the algorithm,we apply the Curvelet transform to denoising seismic signals while retaining the weak information in the signal as much as possible.The simulation experiments show that the improved threshold denoising method based on Curvelet transform is superior to the frequency domain filtering,wavelet denoising and traditional Curvelet denoising method in detailed information extraction and signal denoising of low SNR signals.The calculation accuracy of the relative wave velocity variation of underground medium is improved.

A reweighted damped singular spectrum analysis method for robust seismic noise suppression

(Multichannel)Singular spectrum analysis is considered as one of the most effective methods for seismic incoherent noise suppression.It utilizes the low-rank feature of seismic signal and regards the noise suppression as a low-rank reconstruction problem.However,in some cases the seismic geophones receive some erratic disturbances and the amplitudes are dramatically larger than other receivers.The presence of this kind of noise,called erratic noise,makes singular spectrum analysis(SSA)reconstruction unstable and has undesirable effects on the final results.We robustify the low-rank reconstruction of seismic data by a reweighted damped SSA(RD-SSA)method.It incorporates the damped SSA,an improved version of SSA,into a reweighted framework.The damping operator is used to weaken the artificial disturbance introduced by the low-rank projection of both erratic and random noise.The central idea of the RD-SSA method is to iteratively approximate the observed data with the quadratic norm for the first iteration and the Tukeys bisquare norm for the rest iterations.The RD-SSA method can suppress seismic incoherent noise and keep the reconstruction process robust to the erratic disturbance.The feasibility of RD-SSA is validated via both synthetic and field data examples.

Improving Airgun Signal Detection with Small-Aperture Seismic Array in Yunnan

Repeating airgun sources are eco-friendly sources for monitoring the changes in the physical properties of subsurface mediums,but their signals decay quickly and are buried in the noises soon after traveling short distances.Stacking waveforms from different airgun shots recorded by a single seismic station(shot stacking)is the most popular technique to detect weak signals from noisy backgrounds,and has been widely used to process the data of Fixed Airgun Signal Transmission Stations(FASTS)in China.However,shot stacking sacrifices the time resolution in monitoring to recover a qualified airgun signal by stacking many shots at distance stations,and also suffers from persistent local noises.In this paper,we carried out several small-aperture seismic array experiments around the Binchuan FAST Station(BCFASTS)in Yunnan Province,China,and applied the array technique to improve airgun signal detection.The results show that seismic array processing combining with shot stacking can suppress seismic noises more efficiently,and provide better signal-to-noise ratio(SNR)and coherent airgun signals with less airgun shots.This work suggests that the array technique is a feasible and promising tool in FAST to increase the time resolution and reduce noise interference on routine monitoring.

Seismic electric signals in seismic prone areas

The Varotsos-Alexopoulos-Nomicos （VAN） method of short-term earthquake prediction was introduced in the 1980s. The VAN method enables estimation of the epicenter, magnitude and occurrence time of an impending earthquake by observing transient changes of the electric field of the Earth termed seismic electric signals （SES）. Here, we present a few examples of SES observed in various earthquake prone areas worldwide.

Retrieving Drill Bit Seismic Signals Using Surface Seismometers

Seismic while drilling （SWD） is an emerging horehole seismic imaging technique that uses the downhole drill-bit vibrations as seismic source. Without interrupting drilling, SWD technique can make near-real-time images of the rock formations ahead of the bit and optimize drilling operation, with reduction of costs and the risk of drilling. However, the signal to noise ratio （SNR） of surface SWD-data is severely low for the surface acquisition of SWD data. Here, we propose a new method to retrieve the drill-bit signal from the surface data recorded by an array of broadband seismometers. Taking advantages of wavefield analysis, different types of noises are identified and removed from the surface SWD-data, resulting in the significant improvement of SNR. We also optimally synthesize seis- mic response of the bit source, using a statistical cross-coherence analysis to further improve the SNR and retrieve both the drill-bit direct arrivals and reflections which are then used to establish a reverse vertical seismic profile （RVSP） data set for the continuous drilling depth. The subsurface images derived from these data compare well with the corresponding images of the three-dimension surface seismic survey cross the well.

Ability to detect weak effective seismic signals by utilizing chaotic vibrator system

Taking the advantage of CVS (Chaotic Vibrator System) sensitivity of large-scale periodic phase-state response to quasi-periodic or periodic signals,a series of numerical experiments were made to understand the ability of CVS to detect weak effective seismic signals in the common-shot seismic record distorted by strong stochastic noise. The re-sults demonstrate that the large-scale periodic phase-states of CVS are correlated with the signal composition of the quasi-periodic wavelet sequence constructing from horizontal moveout of seismic events,noise strength and the noise distortion de-gree to signal. For the same kind of events,the higher the noise distortion degree is,the lower the detectable SNR can be reached by CVS. For seismic data with the same noise distortion degree,the closer the scanning seismic velocity (the trial moveout ve-locity) approaches to the accurate velocity,the higher the detectable SNR can be reached by CVS. More-over,the truncating scanning velocities form an asymmetric belt,which indirectly makes CVS achieve a large-scale periodic phase-state and then the ratio of wavelet distortion coefficients in events can be a biggish variable scope.

Joint observation of long period tremor signals with broadband seismometer,tiltmeter and gravimeter

We report here the observation result of joint observation of long period tremor signals with broadband seismome-ter,tiltmeter and gravimeter at the HUST(Huazhong University of Science and Technology)station.The observed data were compared and analyzed.Since 2005,the several tens of abnormal tremor signals which are weak,com-plex and duration of 2 to 3 days have been synchronously recorded by the different instruments.The tremor signals have the periodic domain in the range of 3 to 5 minutes,20 to 30 minutes and even more than 1 hour.The observa-tion shows such tremors are a physical existence.The analysis indicates that a part of the tremors caused by the typhoon from the western Pacific Ocean.These tremors have a close relationship with wind velocity of typhoon and distance between the typhoon center and the station.Except these,the cause of others is still unclear.

Wavelet analysis and its application to signal processing

The construction of basic wavelet was discussed and many basic analyzing wavelets was compared. Acomplex analyzing wavelet which is continuous, smoothing, orthogonal and exponential decreasing was presented, andit was used to decompose two blasting seismic signals with the continuous wavelet transforms (CWT). The resultshows that wavelet analysis is the better method to help us determine the essential factors which create damage effectsthan Fourier analysis.

Study on automatic recognition of the first motion in a seismic event

In this paper, we have studied the waveforms of background noise in a seismograph and set up an AR model to characterize them. We then complete the modeling and the automatic recognition program. Finally, we provide the results from automatic recognition and the manual recognition of the first motion for 25 underground explosions.

A Novel Approach for Estimating Debris Flow Velocities from Near-Field Broadband Seismic Observations

On August 7^(th),2010,Sanyanyu and Luojiayu debris flows triggered by a heavy rain have lashed Zhouqu City around midnight,leading to catastrophic destruction which killed 1765 people and resulted in enormous economic loss.The ZHQ Seismic Station is located approximately 170 m west of the outlet of the Sanyanyu Gully.The seismometer deployed at the seismic station started recording seismic signals of ever-enlarging amplitude around 10 minutes before the debris flow rushed out of the Sanyanyu Gully,showing ever approaching seismic source,i.e.the debris flow.In this study,we analyze this seismic event and propose an inversion algorithm to estimate the velocity of the debris flow by searching the best-fitting pairs of envelopes in the synthetic seismograms and the corresponding field seismic records in a least-square sense.Inversion results reveal that,before rushing out of the outlet,the average velocity of the debris flow gradually increased from 6.2 m/s to 7.1 m/s and finally reached 15 m/s at approximately 0.5 km above the outlet and kept this value since then.Obviously,the ever-increasing velocity of the debris flow is the key factor for the following disasters.Compared with other studies,our approach can provide the velocity distribution for the debris flow before its outbreak;Besides,it has the potential to provide technological support for a better understanding of the disaster process of a debris flow.