Adaptive picking of microseismic event arrival using a power spectrum envelope

An automatic, adaptive, spectrogram-based algorithm for picking the arrival time of microseismic data is proposed. The algorithm provides a significant improvement in the ratio of detected events to false triggers and in the resolution of the microseismic structure. It mainly addresses the problem of automatic picking when the signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) is low and so false and missed triggers frequently occur. It combines the short time average/long time average (STA/LTA) algorithm with an envelope algorithm. It also constructs an envelope from a time–frequency representation of the signal. The threshold is set dynamically, according to the existing noise level and the S/N ratio. The algorithm also uses the fixed LTA value to represent the noise level for a seismic record. It is applied to pick the arrival times of P-waves of local events recorded at eight stations.