The discrete wavelet transform as a tool for automatic phase pickers

Abstract

Seismic data consist of traces, which contain information about a seismic event, but in some period of time may virtually be noise. A trace, which contains seismic information, is called a seismic signal. Seismic signals consist of several typically short energy bursts, called phases, exhibiting several patterns in terms of dominant frequency, amplitude and polarization. Amongst others, significant phases are the P-phase and the S-phase. We present a fast algorithm to detect the S-phase in a seismic signal. In this method we use a combination of traditional S-phase detection methods from seismology and the discrete wavelet transform. First results are presented to demonstrate our new approach.