GEOPHYSICS, VOL. 71, NO. 6 共NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2006兲; P. V163–V169, 7 FIGS., 1 TABLE.

10.1190/1.2335873

Local linear coherent noise attenuation based on local polynomial

approximation

Wenkai Lu1, Wenpo Zhang2, and Dongqi Liu3

the data, which is usually inherent in this process, producing a

ABSTRACT
We propose a new technique for the attenuation of locally
coherent noise. We assume that the moveout of the noise is lo-
cally linear and approximate its amplitude variations with
offset using piecewise 共local兲 polynomial models. Thus, our
method consists of three steps: detection of the noise 共locally
linear coherent noise, LLCN兲, amplitude estimation by a lo-
cal polynomial approximation 共LPA兲, and subtraction of the
estimated coherent noise from the original data. Applying the
proposed method to synthetic data and to a field data set
shows that the LPA filter has good ability to model LLCN and
is insensitive to the filter parameters. Comparisons of the re-
sults obtained by our method with those from the traditional
frequency-wavenumber filter and the localized 2D filter in
the Fourier projection domain 共FPF兲 show that the new meth-
od outperforms both traditional methods in situations with
complex coherent noise.
INTRODUCTION
In seismic applications, undesired coherent energy 共airwaves,
ground roll, etc.兲 may be difficult to suppress during seismic data
processing. Several methods have been developed and used in prac-
tice for filtering coherent energy. In general, these methods can be
classified into two groups: global filtering and local filtering. Two of
the best-known examples of global filtering methods are Radon
transform 共 ␶ -p兲 filtering and frequency-wavenumber 共f-k兲 filtering.
In either case, the data are transformed first into the corresponding
domain 共␶ -p or f-k兲. In these two domains, filtering can be applied,
either to reject or pass coherent components according to their veloc-
ities. The most undesirable aspect of a global filter is the mixing of
wormy appearance in the output data.
Other useful operators and separation methodologies are present-
ed in many papers. A localized 2D filter in the Fourier projection do-
main 共FPF兲 proposed by Lu 共2001兲 shows good local properties and
less filtering distortion in linear coherent noise suppression. In the
FPF 共 ␶,p,x兲, where x is the offset of the input data, the linear coher-
ent noise is identified by a simple threshold detector. After that, a 1D
notch filter is used to remove the components corresponding to the
coherent noise. Filtering approaches in the ␶ -p-x domain are dis-
cussed also by Mitchell and Kelamis 共1990兲. Abma and Claerbout
共1995兲 use a least-squares inversion method to predict both signal
and noise in seismic data. Nemeth et al. 共2000兲 present a migration
filtering method to separate signal and coherent noise according to
their propagation paths. Linville and Meek 共1995兲 introduce a proce-
dure for optimally removing localized coherent noise when the noise
is localized in time. Dossary et al. 共2001兲 describe an adaptive linear
noise attenuation technique based on patchwise ␶ -p transforms that
provide good ground-roll suppression while preserving the signal,
especially in the high-frequency components of the data. Lu 共2006兲
proposes an adaptive filter based on singular value decomposition
and texture direction detection and demonstrates good results. The
radial trace domain 共Brown and Claerbout, 2000; Henley, 2003兲
proved to be an effective domain in which to attenuate the coherent
noise on both prestack and poststack seismic data. Ulrych et al.
共1999兲 give a good tutorial about the separation of seismic signal and
noise.
All of the methods mentioned above assume that the noise is lin-
early coherent. However, in some field data, the coherent noise is lo-
cally linear only because of complex acquisition circumstances 共for
example, mountain and desert environments兲. In addition, it may be
useful to have a more general noise model, allowing for amplitude
variations of the noise and for noise events that have different move-
outs but interfere in the time/distance 共t-x兲 domain. Similar to the
FPF method 共Lu, 2001兲, our method uses a threshold detector to scan

Manuscript received by the Editor June 18, 2004; revised manuscript received April 11, 2006; published online October 18, 2006.
1
Tsinghua University, Department of Automation, Institute of Information, Beijing 100084, China. E-mail: lwkmf@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn.
2
Peking University, Department of Geophysics, Beijing 100871, China, and Exploration and Development Research Institute, Liaohe Oil Field Branch Coop-
eration, CNPC, Panjin City, Liaoning Province 124010, China. E-mail: zhangwp@petrochina.com.
3
PetroChina Research Institute of Petroleum Exploration and Development, Institute of Geophysics, Beijing 100083, China, and Exploration and Develop-
ment Research Institute, Liaohe Oil Field Branch Cooperation, CNPC, Panjin City, Liaoning Province 124010, China. E-mail: ldq509@126.com.
© 2006 Society of Exploration Geophysicists. All rights reserved.

V163
V164 Lu et al.

for the noise in a predefined velocity range, a procedure that extracts We rewrite equation 5 in vector-matrix form:
the local noise trajectory coordinates in the time-velocity domain.
Subsequently, a low-rank polynomial approximation, which is a 1D n̂c = Ca, 共6兲
filter, is implemented point by point along the detected noise trajec-
where n̂c = 关n̂c共xi, ␯,t兲;i = 1, . . ., M兴T, a = 关a0,a1, . . ., aL兴T and
tory to estimate the noise component.

冤 冥
In this paper, we describe first the theory of the proposed method. 1 共x1 − x兲 ¯ 共x1 − x兲L
Then we show the performance of our method on synthetic and field
data, with comparisons to the traditional f-k and FPF approaches. 1 共x2 − x兲 ¯ 共x2 − x兲L
C= . 共7兲
] ] ] ]
THEORY
1 共x M − x兲 ¯ 共x M − x兲L
Suppose the coherent noise can be separated from the desired sig-
The polynomial coefficients are estimated by minimizing the fol-
nal by its moveout velocity. We denote the velocity range of the co-
lowing objective function:
herent noise as V. For one given velocity ␯, in the range of velocities
V, and a particular zero-offset time t0, a 1D signal can be extracted E = 储n̂c − y储22 , 共8兲
from the seismic shot gather d共t,x兲 along the following trajectory: where y = 关y共xi, ␯,t兲;i = 1, . . ., M兴 . T

A least-square solution for the coefficients of the polynomial is

tx = t0 + x/␯ , 共1兲 obtained as 共Bjorck,1996兲:
where x is the offset, and tx is the time location of the extracted 1D a共␯兲 = 共CTC兲−1CTy. 共9兲
signal at offset x. Using the polynomial obtained above, an estimation of the coherent
For a given time t0, we sample the velocity range V at equal incre- noise at offset x, n̂c共x, ␯,t0兲, is obtained. The energy ratio between the
ments. The trajectory is determined by equation 1 using the time t0 original extracted 1D signal and its approximation is given by
and the velocity ␯. The extracted 1D signal, which is denoted as
y共x, ␯,t0兲, is expressed as
y共x, ␯,t0兲 = d共tx,x兲 = d共t0 + x/␯,x兲. 共2兲
冑 兺 关n̂ 共x, ␯,t 兲兴
x苸X
c 0
2

冑
e共␯兲 = . 共10兲
As mentioned above, the seismic record consists of three compo-
nents: signal, coherent noise, and random noise. Equation 2 can be
兺 关y共x, ␯
x苸X
,t 兲兴 0
2

rewritten as
Because we assume that only the coherent noise at velocity ␯ in the
y共x, ␯,t0兲 = s共x, ␯,t0兲 + nc共x, ␯,t0兲 + nr共x, ␯,t0兲, 共3兲 extracted 1D signal is predictable, a simple detector based on a given
where s共x, ␯,t0兲 is the desired signal, nc共x, ␯,t0兲 is the coherent noise threshold ␴ is applied to decide whether the signal at offset x is most-
ly coherent noise or not 共Lu, 2001兲. The estimated coherent noise is

that is supposed to be modeled as locally linear coherent noise
共LLCN兲 in this paper, and nr共x, ␯,t0兲 is the random noise.
Because the 1D signal y共x, ␯,t0兲 is extracted along a trajectory de-
fined by a coherent noise velocity, it will consist mostly of the coher-
ent noise nc共x, ␯,t0兲. To remove undesired coherent energy, ␶ -p and
f-k filters use only differences in moveout velocity. When these two
methods are used to estimate and then subtract the noise, this is
equivalent to estimating the coherent noise corresponding to 共 ␯,t0兲
as the mean value of the 1D signal y共x, ␯,t0兲,
n̂c共x, ␯,t0兲 = m共␯,t0兲 = 兺x y共x, ␯,t0兲/N, 共4兲
where N is the number of the traces involved in the above estimation
and m共 ␯,t0兲 is the mean value of the extracted 1D signal.
Similar to ␶ -p and f-k filters, the FPF method 共Lu, 2001兲 also uses
equation 4 for the coherent noise estimation. In the FPF method, a
simple detector based on a given threshold and the ratio between
兩m共 ␯,t0兲兩 and 兺x 兩y共x, ␯,t0兲兩/N is applied to decide whether the 1D sig-
nal y共x, ␯,t0兲 is mostly coherent noise or not.
To improve the noise estimate in equation 4, we introduce a local
polynomial approximation 共LPA兲-based estimator. To estimate the
coherent noise at the offset x, only a few traces 共denoted as X兲 around
offset x are used to make a low-order polynomial approximation.
Suppose M traces are included and the order of the polynomial is
L共L ⬍ M ⱕ N兲; the LPA is expressed as
L the data shown in Figure 1a to simulate the coherent noise. The dom-
n̂c共xi, ␯,t0兲 = 兺 ak共xi − x兲k, i = 1, . . ., M , 共5兲
k=0
where ak, k = 0, . . ., L are the coefficients of the polynomial.
再 冎
n̂c共x, ␯,t0兲 if e共␯兲 ⱖ ␴;
n̂共x, ␯,t0兲 = 共11兲
0 if e共␯兲 ⬍ ␴ .
By processing seismic data trace by trace, an estimation of the coher-
ent noise corresponding to 共 ␯,t0兲 is obtained. The filtered signal is
expressed as
ŝ共x, ␯,t0兲 = y共x, ␯,t0兲 − n̂共x, ␯,t0兲. 共12兲
In summary, the proposed method and the FPF filter 共Lu, 2001兲
detect the coherent noise in the 共t0, ␯,x兲 domain using a threshold,
while ␶ -p and f-k filters exploit the moveout velocity only. Further-
more, the LPA filter achieves a better coherent noise estimate by us-
ing equation 5, in comparison to these methods that estimate the co-
herent noise using equation 4.
EXAMPLES
To demonstrate the performance of the proposed method, we ap-
ply it first to a synthetic data set based on the convolutional model.
We create a synthetic shot with six hyperbolic reflections 共Figure
1a兲. The sample interval in time is 4 ms, and the dominant frequency
of the Ricker wavelet used to simulate these reflections is 30 Hz. In
Figure 1b, three linear events 共N1, N2, and N3兲 are superimposed on
inant frequency of the Ricker wavelet used to simulate the coherent
noise is 10 Hz. The reflectivities used to create these linear events
vary with offset 共Table 1兲. The filtered results obtained using the f-k,
 Local linear coherent noise attenuation V165

FPF, and LPA techniques are shown in Figure 1c–e, respectively.
The noise removed by the f-k, FPF, and LPA filters are shown in Fig-
ure 2a–c, respectively. In this circumstance, where the amplitudes of
the coherent noise decrease with offset, the result obtained by the
proposed method contains less residual noise compared to those ob-
tained by the other two methods. In this experiment, each method is
performed in two steps: noise estimation followed by subtraction of
the noise from the data.
Figure 3 shows an original shot gather of a field data set with 360
traces acquired in a desert in northwest China. The length of each

Figure 1. Synthetic data example. 共a兲 Shot gather with only six reflections. 共b兲 Shot gather with reflections and coherent noise. Result obtained by
共c兲 the f-k filter, 共d兲 the FPF filter, and 共e兲 the LPA filter.

Figure 2. Synthetic data example. The noise removed by 共a兲 the f-k
filter, 共b兲 the FPF filter, and 共c兲 the LPA filter. Figure 3. An original shot gather with complex coherent noise.

Table 1. The reflectivity versus offset x for creation of the linear events in the synthetic data.

Linear event N1 N2 N3

共 兲 共 25 兲
x x 2 x x 2
Reflectivity 0.3 − 0.001* − 0.00001* 0.25 − 0.001* 0.2 − 0.0001*
versus offset 25 25 25
V166 Lu et al.

trace is 6000 ms. The sample interval is 4 ms. It is seen that the co-
herent noise pattern is complicated in this gather. First we apply an
f-k filter to suppress the coherent noise. The result obtained by this
f-k filter and the noise removed are shown in Figure 4a and b, respec-
tively. The coherent noise is attenuated, but there are large artifacts
over the whole profile. To reduce the signal distortion, the f-k filter
cannot be designed to remove the coherent noise completely. In Fig-
ure 4a, the residual coherent noise is visible. The FPF method is also
applied on the same shot gather; its result is shown in Figure 4c. The
threshold is 0.2. It is seen that the coherent noise is attenuated while
the signal is well preserved. However, there are still some visible re-
sidual coherent noise events in Figure 4c because the FPF method

Figure 4. Results obtained by linear coherent noise suppression techniques. 共a兲 The result after f-k coherent noise attenuation. 共b兲 The noise re-
moved by the f-k filter. 共c兲 The result after FPF coherent noise attenuation. 共d兲 The noise removed by the FPF filter. 共e兲 The result after LPAcoher-
ent noise attenuation. 共f兲 The noise removed by our LPA method.
 Local linear coherent noise attenuation V167

cannot provide a good estimation of the noise for this complicated
noise pattern. Figure 4d shows the noise removed by the FPF meth-
od. Figure 4e and f shows the result obtained by the proposed LPA
method and the noise removed, respectively. The threshold ␴ is 0.4,
whereas M = 21 traces are used to design the polynomial filter. The
order of the polynomial is L = 4. It appears that the coherent noise is
removed well by our space and time-velocity localized filter without
damaging the signals.
We now examine the performance of the proposed method with
different choices of the parameters L and M and threshold ␴. In each
experiment, only one parameter is altered, whereas the other two pa-
rameters are fixed. Some results of our experiments are shown in
Figure 5. When the parameters are set to L = 0, M = 21, and ␴
= 0.4, the filtered result and the removed noise are shown in Figure
5a and b, respectively. It is seen that a lower-rank polynomial does

Figure 5. Sensitivity of the proposed method to different choices of parameters. 共a兲 Filtered result and 共b兲 the noise removed when M = 21, ␴
= 0.4, and L = 0. 共c兲 Filtered result and 共d兲 the noise removed when L = 4, ␴ = 0.4, and M = 11. 共e兲 Filtered result and 共f兲 the noise removed
when L = 4, M = 21, and ␴ = 0.6.
V168 Lu et al.

not give a good approximation of the LLCN in this case. There is still
some visible residual coherent noise in Figure 5a. When the parame-
ters are set to L = 4, M = 11, and ␴ = 0.4, the filtered result and the
removed noise are shown in Figure 5c and d, respectively. In Figure
5d, there are some visible reflection signals removed as part of the
noise. When the parameters are set to L = 4, M = 21, and ␴ = 0.6,
the filtered result and the removed noise are shown in Figure 5e and
f, respectively. There is visible residual coherent noise in Figure 5e
because the estimated noise is too small. It is clear that the parame-
ters used to obtain the result shown in Figure 4e 共L = 4, M = 21, and
␴ = 0.4兲 give the best filtered result. The results shown in Figure 5
demonstrate the sensitivity of the LPA method to the parameters.
To evaluate the performance of the proposed method further, we
show the stack sections before and after applications of these three
methods in Figure 6. The parameters used to obtain Figure 4 are
adopted to process all shot gathers, and the same mute parameters
and stacking velocity are used to obtain these stack profiles. Figure
6a shows the stack section of the original data. The stack sections of
the filtered results obtained by the f-k, FPF, and LPA filters are
shown in Figure 6b–d, respectively. In Figure 6a, the seismic events
are obscured by the coherent noise over the whole profile. After co-
herent noise attenuation by our method, the seismic events shown in
Figure 6d are enhanced with less residual noise compared to the re-
sults obtained by the other two methods. The stack sections of the
noise removed by the f-k, FPF, and LPA filters are shown in Figure
7a–c, respectively. In comparison with the f-k filter, the FPF and
LPA filters preserve the signal better, and the LPA filter removes
more coherent noise than the FPF filter.

Figure 6. Stack sections. 共a兲 Before coherent noise attenuation and after application of 共b兲 the f-k filter, 共c兲 the FPF filter, and 共d兲 the proposed
method.
 Local linear coherent noise attenuation V169

CONCLUSIONS

We propose an LPA-based method for attenuation of LLCN. The

proposed method is local in the 共t0, ␯,x兲 domain and detects and esti-
mates LLCN effectively. The performance of the proposed method
was evaluated with different choices of three key parameters of the
LPA filter. From these experiments, it is seen that the LPA filter is ro-
bust and not very sensitive to these three parameters. One important
condition for our method to be effective is that the noise is locally
linear coherent, such that the noise trajectories can be fitted piece-
wise by lines and the amplitude variation along the trajectory can be
approximated by polynomials. In general, this condition is satisfied
in seismic data processing. Note that our method does not assume
constant amplitudes for the noise along the locally linear trajecto-
ries. Comparison of the profiles resulting from the application of the
f-k, FPF, and LPA filters shows that the best results are obtained us-
ing our proposed technique.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This work was sponsored by the National Natural Science Foun-

dation of China 共40474040兲. The author is grateful to the Associate
Editor and three anonymous reviewers for their constructive re-
marks on this manuscript.

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Figure 7. Stack sections. The noise removed by 共a兲 the f-k filter, 共b兲
the FPF filter, and 共c兲 the LPA filter.