First Arrival Picking of Zero-Phase Seismic Data by Hilbert Envelope Empirical Half Window (HEEH) Method

Area of Science:

• Geophysics
• Seismic Data Processing
• Signal Analysis

Background:

• First arrival travel time picking is crucial for seismic data processing.
• Traditional methods struggle with non-minimum phase seismic data.
• Existing techniques often rely on detecting energy jumps at trace onsets.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a robust method for first arrival picking in non-minimum phase seismic data.
• To improve the accuracy and reliability of seismic data interpretation.
• To address limitations of conventional energy jump detection methods.

Main Methods:

• Complex trace analysis using the Hilbert integral transform to generate complex seismic traces.
• Envelope extraction from the complex seismic trace.
• Outlier detection via the three-sigma rule to identify first arrival energy onsets.

Main Results:

• The method accurately detected first arrivals in zero-phase synthetic data with added noise.
• Testing on real Vibroseis data demonstrated 67% accuracy within 20 milliseconds of manual picks.
• The proposed technique generates logical windows for precise first arrival identification.

Conclusions:

• The complex trace analysis and outlier detection method is effective for picking first arrivals in non-minimum phase seismic data.
• This approach offers a significant improvement over traditional methods for challenging datasets.
• The technique shows promise for enhancing geophysical data processing workflows.