Processing of array sonic logging data with multi-scale STC technique

Abstract

It is desirable to develop new signal processing techniques for effectively extracting reflected waves under the strong interferences of borehole guided waves. We presented a multi-scale semblance method for the separation and velocity (slowness) analysis of the reflected waves and guided waves in borehole acoustic logging. It was specially designed for the newly developed tools with ultra-long source-receiver spacing for acoustic reflection survey. This new method was a combination of the dual tree complex wavelets transform (DT-CWT) and the slowness travel time coherence (STC) method. Applications to the 3D finite difference (FD) modeling simulated data and to the field array sonic waveform signals have demonstrated the ability of this method to appropriately extract the reflected waves under severe interference from the guided waves and to suppress noise in the time-frequency domain.