Robust reduced-rank filtering for erratic seismic noise attenuation

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Abstract
Singular spectrum analysis (SSA) or Cadzow reduced-rank filtering is an efficient method for random noise attenuation. SSA starts by embedding the seismic data into a Hankel matrix. Rank reduction of this Hankel matrix followed by antidiagonal averaging is utilized to estimate an enhanced seismic signal. Rank reduction is often implemented via the singular value decomposition (SVD). The SVD is a nonrobust matrix factorization technique that leads to suboptimal results when the seismic data are contaminated by erratic noise. The term erratic noise designates non-Gaussian noise that consists of large isolated events with known or unknown distribution. We adopted a robust low-rank factorization that permitted use of the SSA filter in situations in which the data were contaminated by erratic noise. In our robust SSA method, we replaced the quadratic error criterion function that yielded the truncated SVD solution by a bisquare function. The Hankel matrix was then approximated by the product of two lower dimensional factor matrices. The iteratively reweighed least-squares method was used to approximately solve for the optimal robust factorization. Our algorithm was tested with synthetic and real data. In our synthetic examples, the data were contaminated with band-limited Gaussian noise and erratic noise. Then, denoising was carried out by means of f-x deconvolution, the classical SSA method, and the proposed robust SSA method. The f-x deconvolution and the classical SSA method failed to properly eliminate the noise and to preserve the desired signal. On the other hand, the robust SSA method was found to be immune to erratic noise and was able to preserve the desired signal. We also tested the robust SSA method with a data set from the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin. The results with this data set revealed improved denoising performance in portions of data contaminated with erratic noise.

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