BASIC DEFINITIONS

version 1.0 released 29/1/99

CONTENTS
DOMAINS AND TRANSFORMS
FOURIER TRANSFORM
CONVOLUTION
CORRELATION
WAVELET ANALYSIS - wiener filtering
FK TRANSFORM - spatial aliasing
RADON TRANSFORM
TAU-P TRANSFORM

DOMAINS AND TRANSFORMS

Seismic data is recorded into what is termed the time-
domain. Several common processing routines transform
the data into a new domain, perform some kind of
operation and then the inverse routine is used to reverse
the transform. The purpose of this procedure is to find a
domain where signal can be more easily be separated
from noise and filtered or muted out. It is often easier to
understand noise types and design a filter with the data
transformed into the new domain. A filter is applied to
data to alter it in a manner calculated to improve its
quality in some way by removing noise (unwanted signal).
Muting refers to the process of zeroing unwanted data
samples to improve data quality and is therefore a crude
filter. In theory, if no operation were performed the
output would be identical to the input, however this is not
always the case in practise because of approximations
made in the transform stages. Another reason for using transforms is computational
efficiency. In the recent past when computer power was minimal and computer time was
expensive then the often minimal loss in accuracy (or introduction of artifacts) using
transforms was considered acceptable compared to the computer time saved. Modern
computer systems may not need such transforms to perform operations efficiently, however
much of the historical literature will be written from this perspective. The user is unlikely to
notice the differences on the final processed data whichever way the routines are
implemented, although some of the parameter choices may differ in order to minimise
artifacts.

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COMMON TRANSFORMS AND PROCEDURES

FOURIER TRANSFORM
The Fourier
Transform is by far
the most important
used in seismology.
Fourier's theory
states that a given
signal can be
synthesised as a
summation of
sinusoidal waves
of various
amplitudes,
frequencies and
phases. Using the
Fourier Transform
a time domain
signal is
transformed to the frequency domain where it is equivalent to an Amplitude Spectrum and a
Phase Spectrum. The adjacent figure shows a simple time domain wavelet transformed into it's
frequency domain components. The F-X or w -x domain is also shown. Basically this is a one-
dimensional Fourier Transform over time of usually of a gather or group of traces (hence the
x-dimension). A process operating in this domain will mix or alter the amplitude spectra of the
group of traces before the inverse transform is applied. Since there is only a single trace in the
figure the F-X domain here just represents a different view of the amplitude spectrum. The
figure was created with PROMAX routine Interactive Spectral Analysis.

Many operations e.g. bandpass frequency filtering are easier to understand in the frequency
domain. The Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) is applied to a digitised time series, and the Fast
Fourier Transform (FFT) is a computer algorithm for rapid DFT computations. The latter
imposes the restriction that the time series must be a power of two samples long e.g. 512, 1024
which is usually achieved by padding seismic traces with extra zeros.

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CONVOLUTION
CONVOLUTION: Is a mathematical way of combining
two signals to achieve a third, modified signal. The
signal we record seems to respond well to being
treated as a series of signals superimposed upon each
other that is seismic signals seem to respond
convolutionally. The process of DECONVOLUTION is
the reversal of the convolution process. Convolution
in the time domain is represented in the frequency
domain by a multiplying the amplitude spectra and
adding the phase spectra. The adjacent figure shows a
spike series representing an acoustic impedance
response from the earth which is convolved (*) with a
source wavelet to produce a resulting seismic signal
which is measured. In principal by deconvolving the
source wavelet we could obtain the earth's
reflectivity. However, noise (unwanted signal) and
other features are also present in the recorded trace
and the source wavelet is rarely known with any
accuracy. In the figure (a) the spikes are sufficiently
separated that the convolution just results in a
duplication of the input wavelet at the spike times
and with the spike amplitudes. The convolution
process just involves multiplying every sample of the
spike series by the input wavelet and adding all the
results. In (b) the spikes are closer together and
interference occurs in the resulting trace. If the
wavelet were known the input spike series could be
discovered by the deconvolution process. The convolutional model of the seismic trace states
that the trace we record is the result of the earth's reflectivity (what we want) convolved with
the source wavelet (and it's ghosts), multiples, the recording system and some noise.

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CORRELATION

CROSS-CORRELATION: Is a statistical measure used to compare two signals as a function of

the time shift (lag) between them. AUTOCORRELATION is a special case where the signal is
compared with itself for a variety of time shifts (lags) and is particularly useful for detecting

repeating periods within signals in

 repeating periods within signals in
the presence of noise. The
autocorrelation function is often
normalised so that its maximum
value at zero lag is 1 (where the
signal is correlated with itself). The
adjacent figure shows the
autocorrelation function of a simple
trace with two separated peaks.
Figure (c) shows that the
autocorrelation clearly identifies the
repeated wavelet in the input time
series by the peak at 100ms. The
autocorrelation has a zero-phase
spectrum. Both auto- and cross-
correlation functions are required in
the suppression of multiple reflections by predictive deconvolution. 

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WAVELET ANALYSIS

A wavelet is a term used to describe a short time series (typically less than 100 samples) which
can be used to represent, for example, the source function. As previously shown, the wavelet
can be studied as a time series in the time domain or in the frequency domain as an amplitude
or phase spectrum. For any amplitude spectrum there are an infinite number of time domain
wavelets which can be constructed by varying the phase spectrum. There are two special types
of phase spectra of specific interest.

The minimum phase wavelet has a short time duration and a concentration of energy at the
start of the wavelet. It is zero before time zero (causal). An ideal seismic source would be a
spike (maximum amplitude at every frequency), but the best practical one would be minimum
phase. It is quite common to convert a given wavelet source wavelet into it's minimum phase
equivalent since several processing stages (e.g. predictive deconvolution) work best by
assuming that the input data is minimum phase. The maximum phase wavelet is the time
reverse of the minimum phase and at every point the phase is greater for the maximum than
the minimum. All other causal wavelets are strictly speaking mixed-phase and will be of
longer time duration. The convolution of two minimum phase wavelets is minimum phase.
The zero-phase wavelet is of shorter duration than the minimum phase equivalent. The
wavelet is symmetrical with a maximum at time zero (non-causal). The fact that energy

arrives before time zero

 arrives before time zero
is not physically
realisable but the wavelet
is useful for increased
resolving power and ease
of picking reflection
events (peak or trough).
The convolution of a
zero-phase and minimum
phase wavelet is mixed
phase (because the phase
spectrum of the original
minimum phase wavelet
is not the unique
minimum phase
spectrum for the new
modified wavelet) and
should be avoided.

A special type of wavelet

often used for modelling purposes is the Ricker wavelet which is defined by it's dominant
frequency. The Ricker wavelet is by definition zero-phase, but a minimum phase equivalent
can be constructed. The Ricker wavelet is used because it is simple to understand and often
seems to represent a typical earth response.

WIENER FILTERING: To find the filter to shape a wavelet to another wavelet is not an exact
process, but the filter which produces the closest result can be obtained by a mathematical
technique known as least squares. The Wiener filter is that which best (in a least squares
sense) shapes a given wavelet to a desired wavelet. Applications include shaping a source
wavelet to it's minimum phase equivalent, shaping a wavelet within the data to a spike (to
improve resolution) or to shape a time-series with multiples to one without multiples
(predictive deconvolution). Without going into the mathematics it turns out that the filter is
found by dividing the cross-correlation of the input with the desired output by the auto-
correlation of the input. This solution sets up a series of simultaneous equations which are
solved rapidly in the computer by matrix inversion using the Levinson algorithm. A certain
percentage of noise (called white noise or white light) is added to stabilise the inversion
program.

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 F-K TRANSFORM
A two-dimensional Fourier transform over time and space is called an F-K (or K-F) transform
where F is the frequency (Fourier transform over time) and K refers to wave-number (Fourier
transform over space). The space dimension is controlled by the trace spacing and (just like
when sampling a time series) must be sampled according to the Nyquist criterion to avoid
spatial aliasing. Temporal Aliasing was previously discussed. In the F-K domain there is a two-
dimensional amplitude and phase spectrum but usually only the former is displayed for clarity
with colour intensity used to show the amplitudes of the data at different frequency and wave-
number components. Several noise types such as groundroll or seismic interference may be
more readily separated in the FK amplitude domain than the time-space domain and therefore
will be easier to mute before the inverse transform is applied.

In the adjacent
figure the flat
event on the
synthetic CMP
gather shown in
red maps onto the
vertical K=0 axis.
The event coloured
in red is seen to
have a dominant
frequency content
of 5-40Hz. The
dipping refraction
shown in blue
maps to a dipping
blue event and this event becomes spatially aliased above 30Hz where it shows reverse dip
(note the total frequency content is the same since it is the same synthetic wavelet). The FK
domain shows the spatial aliasing clearly whereas in the time domain it is more difficult to
spot by eye. The curved event shown in green maps to a range of dips in FK. Therefore the FK
transform may be described as decomposing the input data into a series of straight lines which
map to straight lines in the FK space, hence a range of dips in time can be identified in FK and
suppressed by muting. However it is easily seen that if a filter was designed to remove the RED
event it would be difficult to avoid filtering parts of the GREEN event (the horizontal portions
on the near offsets). It is easy to introduce artifacts using this technique by application of
filters with too steep slopes - considerable smoothing is often required at the filter edges. The
PROMAX routine (FK ANALYSIS) used to produce the figure allows interactive picking of filters
and will display the results interactively for quality control purposes.

Spatial aliasing, is a common problem to be considered when performing data processing. One
way to limit the spatial aliasing of the previous figure would be to remove frequencies above
30Hz. This would be wasteful of primary signal. The trace spacing is also important. Consider
the adjacent figure (a) & (b) showing an event of 70Hz dipping at 20 degrees. Sampling every
12.5m samples the signal properly, but at 25m the signal becomes spatially aliased and appears
 to show reverse dip which confuses
interpretation (as well as many
processing algorithms such as
migration).

Reverse dip is shown more clearly

in figure (c) where the dip of the
dipping event becomes confusing
when high frequencies are present.
This effect is often more apparent to
computer algorithms than the
human eye which tends to de-alias
seismic data. The formula for
determining the maximum
frequency which can be handled
without spatial aliasing is given by:

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RADON TRANSFORM

Strictly speaking the Radon transform is a generic mathematical procedure in which the input
data in the frequency domain are decomposed into a series of events in the RADON domain.
Whichever curve type is chosen will map to a point. Note this is similar to Fourier
decomposition but using more complex functions than sinusoids. Common geophysical usage
however refers to the particular case where the input data is decomposed into parabolas (or
sometimes hyperbolas) since this transform can be computed efficiently. The adjacent shows
such a transformation and illustrates that the RADON domain can be more accurate for
filtering curved
 filtering curved
rather than
dipping events
than the FK
domain - the
technique is now
very commonly
used for multiple
suppression.
Artifacts are also
reduced.
Parameters
required are the
number and
spacing of
parabolas (often
referred to as P
traces) and the maximum frequency to be transformed. The PROMAX routine (RADON
ANALYSIS) is not as interactive as the FK routine.

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TAU-P TRANSFORM

The TAU-P transform is another special case of RADON transform where the data are
decomposed as a series of straight lines which map to points in the tau-p domain. Hyperbolic
events (e.g. those in shot gathers) map to elliptical curves in Tau-P. This process also used to be
referred to as slant-stacking since to produce the tau-p domain the input data may be stacked
along a series of straight lines. The tau-p process is becoming common prior to predictive
deconvolution for multiple suppression since this performs more accurately in the tau-p
domain. The tau-p transform may also be used to optimally isolate and filter guided waves,
refractions and types of interference. Filtering in the tau-p domain is usually more expensive
than in the F-K domain, but can produce better quality results.

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