Time-frequency analysis of seismic data using local attributes

Abstract

Time-frequency analysis is an important technology in seismic data processing and interpretation. To localize frequency content in time, we have developed a novel method for computing a time-frequency map for nonstationary signals using an iterative inversion framework. We calculated time-varying Fourier coefficients by solving a least-squares problem that uses regularized nonstationary regression. We defined the time-frequency map as the norm of time-varying coefficients. Time-varying average frequency of the seismic data can also be estimated from the time-frequency map calculated by our method. We tested the method on benchmark synthetic signals and compared it with the well-known S-transform. Two field data examples showed applications of the proposed method for delineation of sand channels and for detection of low-frequency anomalies.