First-arrival automatic picking based on improved energy ratio method and outlier detection theory

Based on the energy ratio method, an automatic picking method with strong noise resistance is proposed. It considers the influence of the current point’s position on the first-arrival characteristic value. Specifically, an outlier detection technique is proposed to eliminate abnormal first arrivals for low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) seismic data. First, the first arrivals of adjacent shots obtained by the new method are arranged according to the offsets. Then, combined with the distribution characteristics of the first arrivals, a symmetric window centered on the current point is established as the calculation range, and the distance-based outlier detection method is adopted for the abnormal first arrivals. The size of the calculation time window is determined by scanning the given value range. In order to optimize the processing results, we further propose an outlier detection method based on grid density. After this step, the abnormal first arrivals will be further eliminated. Following these steps, the abnormal first arrivals of all shots can be removed effectively. The actual data processing results show that the proposed program can accurately pick up the first arrivals and has a good performance in detecting the abnormal first arrivals.