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Microseismic signal denoising using simple bandpass filtering based on normal time–frequency transform

  • Research Article - Applied Geophysics
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Abstract

In active underground mining environments, monitoring mine vibrations has important implications for both safety and productivity. Microseismic data processing is crucial for subsurface real-time monitoring during mineral mining processes. Microseismic events are difficult to detect due to their small magnitudes and low signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). Useful microseismic signals are usually obscured by long-period microseisms, random noise and artificial strong noise. We propose a useful microseismic denoising algorithm based on the normal time–frequency transform (NTFT) to determine the instantaneous frequency, amplitude and phase information from useful microseismic signals. The energy difference in the time–frequency domain between useful microseismic signals and strong noise is small. Therefore, based on the different phase characteristics of microseismic signals and noise in the NTFT phase spectrum, noise can be filtered out by reconstructing the microseismic signals in useful real-time frequency bands. The proposed simple bandpass filtering (SBPF) method is advantageous because the denoising result does not produce phase shifts, energy leakage or artefacts. The only parameter of the proposed method that needs to be defined is the instantaneous cutoff frequency; thus, the denoising operation is simple. We use both synthetic and real data to demonstrate the feasibility of the method for denoising complicated microseismic datasets.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 42074011). We appreciate Yongqian Shao of the Earthquake Administration of Shanghai Municipality for graciously supplying the data used in this work. We used GMT software to prepare the figures (Wessel and Smith 1995).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Geodesy and Earth’s Dynamics, Innovation Academy for Precision Measurement Science and Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, 430077, China

    Yanji Yao, Guocheng Wang & Lintao Liu

  2. College of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Yanji Yao

Authors
  1. Yanji Yao
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  2. Guocheng Wang
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  3. Lintao Liu
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Contributions

The first author Yanji Yao wrote this paper and the data processing code. Guocheng Wang and Lintao Liu revised the manuscript. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Lintao Liu.

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No conflict of interest exists in the submission of this manuscript, and the manuscript is approved by all authors for publication.

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Edited by Dr. Rafał Czarny (ASSOCIATE EDITOR) / Prof. Gabriela Fernández Viejo (CO-EDITOR-IN-CHIEF).

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Yao, Y., Wang, G. & Liu, L. Microseismic signal denoising using simple bandpass filtering based on normal time–frequency transform. Acta Geophys. 71, 2217–2232 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11600-022-01012-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11600-022-01012-1

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