Controlled-source electromagnetic signal detection using a hybrid deep learning model: Convolutional and long short-term memory neural networks

Controlled-source electromagnetic (CSEM) method using a periodic transmitted signal source suppresses random noise by superimposing and averaging the recorded signal over multiple periods. However, it still faces great challenges in strong interference environments. Here we present a CSEM signal detection method based on a hybrid architecture of convolutional neural network (CNN) and long short-term memory neural network (LSTM). Our method improves the quality of the recorded signal by filtering out all the noise periods and retaining the useful signal periods. The core lies in combining the spatial feature extraction capability of CNN with the time series modeling capability of LSTM, which can deeply excavate the feature differences between noise and CSEM useful signal. Meanwhile, a classification model of signal and noise is constructed using a large-scale training dataset. This hybrid model exhibits superior performance compared to other deep learning models such as CNN or LSTM. Also, we propose a novel signal detection mechanism that not only maintains the periodicity of CSEM signal, but also greatly enhances processing efficiency. The results of synthetic and measured data demonstrate that our method can obtain useful signals from CSEM data containing different noise types and significantly improve the quality of sounding curves. In particular, our method is useful for CSEM signal detection in strong interference.