Properties of an improved Gabor wavelet transform and its applications to seismic signal processing and interpretation

Abstract

This paper presents an analytical study of the complete transform of improved Gabor wavelets (IGWs), and discusses its application to the processing and interpretation of seismic signals. The complete Gabor wavelet transform has the following properties. First, unlike the conventional transform, the improved Gabor wavelet transform (IGWT) maps time domain signals to the time-frequency domain instead of the time-scale domain. Second, the IGW’s dominant frequency is fixed, so the transform can perform signal frequency division, where the dominant frequency components of the extracted sub-band signal carry essentially the same information as the corresponding components of the original signal, and the subband signal bandwidth can be regulated effectively by the transform’s resolution factor. Third, a time-frequency filter consisting of an IGWT and its inverse transform can accurately locate target areas in the time-frequency field and perform filtering in a given time-frequency range. The complete IGW transform’s properties are investigated using simulation experiments and test cases, showing positive results for seismic signal processing and interpretation, such as enhancing seismic signal resolution, permitting signal frequency division, and allowing small faults to be identified.