IEEE GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING LETTERS, VOL. 14, NO.

1, JANUARY 2017

127

Seismic TimeFrequency Analysis via STFT-Based

Concentration of Frequency and Time
Naihao Liu, Jinghuai Gao, Xiudi Jiang, Zhuosheng Zhang, and Qian Wang
Abstract Timefrequency (TF) analysis can reveal local
variations in seismic data processing and interpretation, where
seismic signals are nonstationary and time varying. Highquality TF representation (TFR) is important for revealing
the local information about these nonstationary seismic signals
and describing geological structures. Due to the Heisenberg
uncertainty principle, traditional TF methods (e.g., short time
Fourier transform and continuous wavelet transform) cannot get
the finest time resolution and the best frequency resolution at the
same time, which leads to ambiguous TFR with a negative effect
on the seismic signal analysis. Concentration in frequency and
time is proposed to distinguish the different TF contents of timedependent signals with time-varying amplitude and instantaneous
frequencies. We introduce this promising TF analysis tool to
seismic data processing. Experiments on synthetic signals and
seismic data show its validity and effectiveness, which is helpful
for seismic data interpretation in the future.
Index
Terms Concentration
in
frequency
and
time (ConceFT), synchrosqueezing, timefrequency (TF) analysis,
TF resolution.

I. I NTRODUCTION
HE seismic signal is one of the commonest of nonstationary and time-varying signals. It contains rich information
about subtle geological structures. Accurate and effective
analysis of nonstationary spectral variations is a longstanding problem aiming at revealing seismic signal characteristics [1]. However, most signal analysis methods based on the
Fourier transform cannot reveal local features in both the time
and frequency domains simultaneously. Timefrequency (TF)
analysis can map a 1-D time signal into the TF domain, which
can reveal local TF variations well. Hence, TF analysis is an
effective tool for the analysis of nonstationary seismic data and
is widely used in seismic data processing and interpretation.
The short time Fourier transform (STFT) is one of the most
commonly used methods [2]. However, the TF resolution of

Manuscript received June 24, 2016; revised August 28, 2016,

September 28, 2016, and October 24, 2016; accepted November 15, 2016.
Date of publication December 9, 2016; date of current version December 26,
2016. This work was supported in part by the Major Program of the National
Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 41390454 and in part by
Beijing Center for Mathematics and Information Interdisciplinary Science.
N. Liu and J. Gao (the corresponding author) are with the National
Engineering Laboratory for Offshore Oil Exploration, School of Electronic
and Information Engineering, Xian Jiaotong University, Xian 710049, China
(e-mail: lnhfly@163.com; jhgao@mail.xjtu.edu.cn).
X. Jiang is with the Research Center of China National Offshore
Oil
Corporation
(CNOOC),
Beijing
100028,
China
(e-mail:
69854622@qq.com).
Z. Zhang and Q. Wang are with the School of Mathematics and
Statistics, Xian Jiaotong University, Xian 710049, China (e-mail:
zszhang@mail.xjtu.edu.cn; wqlq668930@126.com).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this letter are available
online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LGRS.2016.2630734

the STFT is fixed when the window function and its length
are chosen. The continuous wavelet transform (CWT) is a
well-developed tool employing wavelets as the basis [3] to
overcome the limitations of the STFT, adding a scale variable
in addition to the time variable. The S-transform proposed
in [4] is a TF analysis technique that combines the CWT
and the STFT, and has been widely applied to seismic data
processing [5]. The WignerVille distribution (WVD) has a
higher TF resolution because of not involving any window
function [6], [7]. However, it suffers from the inevitable
cross-term interferences for multicomponent signals, where the
amplitude of the cross term is twice that of auto terms. The
empirical wavelet transform (EWT) is a fast and fully adaptive
wavelet technique that can be conveniently used and produces
a higher TF resolution [8]. EWT has a strong mathematical
support and is more robust than the empirical mode decomposition (EMD) [9]-based methods, which facilitates seismic
data processing and interpretation [10]. The synchrosqueezing
wavelet transform (SST), originally introduced for audio signal
analysis [11], is a promising tool to analyze signals with
TF behavior. The SST can get a higher TF resolution, which
is widely employed in seismic data interpretation [12], [13].
Based on the synchrosqueezing theory, Oberlin et al. [14]
proposed a natural extension of the synchrosqueezing transform to the STFT called the Fourier-based synchrosqueezing
transform, which leads to an approximation result similar
to the SST. Yang et al. [15], [16] proposed the theory of
1-D/2-D continuous synchrosqueezed wave packet transforms
and 2-D synchrosqueezed curvelet transform to analyze wavelike components from their superposition, such as applying to
extract initial information from atomic crystal images.
Based on the excellent properties of the synchrosqueezing
theory, a recent transform called concentration of frequency
and time (ConceFT) is proposed, which combines multitaper
estimation ideas and averaging over random projections with
the synchrosqueezing theory [17]. This novel approach enables
TF analysis with improved resolution. This letter shows the
outstanding performance of ConceFT for seismic TF analysis.
First, the theory of ConceFT is described in detail and the
proposed seismic TF procedures are given. Next, the superior
TF resolution of ConceFT over those of traditional TF
analysis methods is certified using synthetic examples, even
when the signal is corrupted by significant and challenging
noise. Then, ConceFT is applied to field data in order to
show its potential in characterizing the superimposition of
stacked sandstone bodies and distinguishing subtle geological
structures with high precision. Finally, the conclusions of this
letter are presented in the last section.

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IEEE GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING LETTERS, VOL. 14, NO. 1, JANUARY 2017

II. C ONCENTRATION OF F REQUENCY AND T IME

The SST can improve the TF resolution by relocating the
coefficients according to the reassignment rule [11], [12].
However, its performance suffers when the SNR is very
low. The multitaper SST improves antinoise performance by
considering an increasingly larger number of orthonormal
windows, but the distribution of the signal in the TF domain
is smeared out with the increasing number of windows [17].
ConceFT combines the multitaper estimation theory and averaging over random projections with synchrosqueezing [17],
which presents an accurate and antinoise TF representation (TFR) of time-varying signals. In this section, we pay
attention to the STFT-based ConceFT algorithm, which is
performed in the following steps.
Step 1: Choose K
orthonormal Hermite windows,
1 , 2 , . . . , K , which are in the Schwartz space and
concentrate in the TF plane.
Step 2: Take N random vectors e1 , e2 , . . . , eN of unit norm
in R K .Each linear combination of the windows
K
[n] = k=1
(en )k k can define a subspace in the TF
plane [17], in which one can carry out the following
STFT and SST.

Step 3: The S f k represents the STFT of the input seismic

signal f (t) associated with the window function
k (t) shown in [1]


S f k (t, ) =
f ( )k (t )ei2(t ) d .
(1)
K

en )k S f k (t, ) for each

Define S f [n] (t, ) =
k=1 (
n, n = 1, 2, . . . , N.

Step 4: Obviously, the S f k will be spread out over a range of

frequencies [11], [12]. According to the reassignment

rule f [n] (b, ), the synchrosqueezing can shift

the coefficients back [13], which is calculated using

S f [n] (t, )

f [n] (t, ) =

S f [n] (t, )/t

.

2i S f [n] (t, )

(2)

In practice, seismic signals often suffer from noise

and other artifacts. We pick a threshold for

|S f k |, below which f [n] (b, ) is not calculated. The

[n] ,
f (b, ) can be defined as
[n]

S f (t, )/t , S k (t, )

[n] ,

f
f (t, ) = 2i S f [n] (t, )
(3)

k
,
S f (t, ) < .
Step 5: The STFT-based SST can relocate the STFT coef
ficients S f [n] (t, ) making use of the candidate frequency function in (3), which is shown in

S f [n]

,,

(t, )


,
= S f [n] (t, )g ( f [n] (t, ))d

(4)

where g(t) is smooth and has fast decay, with

g(t)dt = 1, g (t) = lim 0 (1/ )g(t/ ) tending
weakly to the delta function (t).

Fig. 1. Example of noise-free synthetic trace. (a) Noise-free synthetic trace

containing six different Ricker wavelets with different dominate frequencies
and time locations. (b)(d) TFRs of the noise-free trace calculated by the
STFT, STFT-SST, and ConceFT, respectively.

Step 6: The STFT-based ConceFT of the input seismic signal

f (t) is the average [17]
C ,
f (t, ) =

N
1 [n] ,,
Sf
(t, ).
N

(5)

n=1

In light of the above, the ConceFT can improve the TF resolution and estimation of the time-varying characteristics of
seismic data. In addition, the introduction of the orthonormal
Hermite windows can successfully suppress noise artifacts,
because the artifacts in the TF domain triggered by the noise
and the orthonormal windows occur at locations sufficiently
different.
III. S YNTHETIC AND F IELD DATA E XAMPLES
Both synthetic and field examples are introduced to certify the effectiveness and stability of the proposed method.
The STFT, STFT-based SST (STFT-SST), and CWT-SST are
presented as comparative methods. The calculation of the
STFT-SST is similar to that of ConceFT. The STFT-SST takes
use of only one fixed window as the window function of STFT,
such as the Gaussian window, while the ConceFT introduces
multitapers and random vectors to suppress noise. The CWTSST, proposed in [11], is based on CWT and improves
the TF resolution by relocating coefficients after estimating
instantaneous frequency, which are similar to (3) and (4). The
details can be found in [11] and [12].
First, a synthetic seismic trace is introduced and shown in
Fig. 1, which contains several seismic wavelets at different
time locations and different dominate frequencies [18]. The
first event is a superposition of two 10 Hz Ricker wavelets
with different arrival times. The second event contains a 10 and
a 40 Hz Ricker wavelet overlapping in time. The last one is
a superposition of two 30 Hz Ricker wavelets with different
arrival times. The time sample is 2 ms and the time duration
is 2.048 s. Fig. 1(b)(d) shows TFRs produced by the STFT,
STFT-SST, and ConceFT, respectively. These three plots can

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129

Fig. 5. Highlighted area in Fig. 3. There are many sedimentary cycles in

the well log, which can prove that the study area is multistages delta.

Fig. 2. Example of noisy synthetic trace. (a) Noisy synthetic trace, which
is added Gaussian white noise and SNR is 0 dB. (b)(d) TFRs of the noisy
trace obtained by the STFT, STFT-SST, and ConceFT.

Fig. 3. 2-D field seismic section from CNOOC, containing 1000 traces and
1100 ms time duration. The time sampling interval is 2 ms. The red arrow
indicates a sandstone reservoir.

Fig. 6. Black rectangles indicate the stacked sandstone bodies (pointed by the
red arrow in Fig. 5). ConceFT can recognize stacked sandstone bodies better,
where the superimposition is much clearer (indicated by the black rectangles).

Fig. 4.

Geological interpretation result of the block area.

distinguish the first event clearly. But the STFT result cannot
describe the other two events and gets a fuzzy TFR. The
STFT-SST improves the TF resolution and can almost characterize the second event, but fails in the last one. The last
plot calculated by the ConceFT improves the TF resolution
and distinguishes all events clearly.
To further prove the stability of the ConceFT, the Gaussian
white noise is added to the synthetic trace, shown in Fig. 2,
whose SNR is 0 dB. It is clearly seen that the synthetic trace

Fig. 7. Enlarged area in Fig. 3 between H1 and H2, where the distributary
channel is rich.

is corrupted by the noise. Various TF analysis approaches

are used to characterize different Ricker wavelets. The STFT
result can also distinguish the two 10 Hz Ricker wavelets, but
failed to depict the other two events. The STFT-SST result
is disturbed by the Gaussian noise and cannot characterize
the wavelets well. Although it is also affected by noise, the
last plot calculated by the ConceFT can describe different
wavelets more clearly than the other two approaches (indicated
by the red arrows and red circles). It can be concluded that

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time section of the 3-D seismic data, which contains 1000

traces and 1450 ms time duration. The time sampling
interval is 2 ms. According to the well data in Fig. 3,
the sandstone reservoir is controlled by the fluvial-delta
deposited system between the horizon H6 and H7 in this study
area. The geological interpretation result is shown in Fig. 4,
which contributes to demonstrate the delta deposition in this
study area. We have enlarged the highlight box area in Fig. 3.
There are many sedimentary cycles in the well log in Fig. 5,
which can further prove that the study area is multistages delta.
The superimposition of sandstone bodies, indicated by the red
arrow, cannot be directly identified because this amplitude
data suffers from heavy noise. 35 Hz slices are calculated by
the STFT, STFT-SST, and ConceFT, respectively. The slice,
obtained by the STFT [Fig. 6(a)], gets an obscure result due
to its low TF resolution. The STFT-SST result improves the
resolution, but fails to characterize the stacked superimposition of sandstone bodies. Due to its antinoise performance,
the ConceFT can recognize stacked sandstone bodies better
(indicated by the black rectangles), where the superimposition
is much clearer.
Finally, various TF analysis methods are applied to the 3-D
field data from CNOOC. We enlarged the highlighted area
in Fig. 3 between H1 and H2, which is shown in Fig. 7
and contains eight well logs. It can be easily seen that there
are plenty of channels in this area. The horizontal slices
are extracted after calculating the 30 Hz frequency cubes of
the 3-D field data using STFT, STFT-SST, CWT-SST, and
ConceFT, shown in Fig. 8. The STFT consequence cannot
depict the channels (indicated by the red rectangles and red
arrows) due to its poor TF resolution. The STFT-SST and
CWT-SST improve the ability to characterize the channels.
The proposed approach can characterize the channels with the
highest accuracy due to its antinoise performance. It can be
concluded that ConceFT can characterize geological structures
more accurately and effectively, which will be helpful for
seismic data interpretation in the future.
IV. C ONCLUSION

Fig. 8. 30 Hz horizontal slices calculated by (a) STFT, (b) STFT-SST,

(c) CWT-SST, and (d) ConceFT. The ConceFT result characterizes the
channels (indicated by the red arrows and rectangles) more clearly.

the ConceFT is stable and effective in seismic signal analysis.

Then, we apply various TF analysis methods to a poststack field 3-D offshore seismic data from China National
Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC). Fig. 3 represents a

A novel TF analysis method is introduced to seismic data

analysis called the ConceFT, and it is applied to seismic data
interpretation. This novel technique can produce an antinoise
and accurate TFR, which can improve the effectiveness and
accuracy of characterizing geological structures. Two experiments, including the noise-free synthetic trace and the noisy
one, illustrate that the ConceFT enhances TF resolution and
has better noise immunity. After applying the ConceFT to field
data, we can easily get the characterization of subtle geological
structures (e.g., the sandstone superimposition and channels)
with high precision. It can be concluded that ConceFT has the
potential to characterize geological features more accurately
and effectively, which will contribute to seismic data interpretation and reservoir identification in the future.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank the Ph.D. candidates
Q. Zhou and K. Zong for their fruitful discussions and help
with this letter.

LIU et al.: SEISMIC TF ANALYSIS VIA STFT

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