Journal of Applied Geophysics 92 (2013) 50–56

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Journal of Applied Geophysics

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jappgeo

Vibroseis deconvolution: A comparison of pre and post correlation

vibroseis deconvolution data in real noisy data
Luca Baradello ⁎, Flavio Accaino
Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e Geofisica Sperimentale OGS Borgo Grotta Gigante 42/c Sgonico (TS), Italy

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Vibroseis is a source used commonly for inland seismic exploration. This non-destructive source is often used
Received 16 August 2012 in urban areas with strong environmental noise. The main goal of seismic data processing is to increase the
Accepted 4 February 2013 signal/noise ratio where a determinant step is deconvolution. Vibroseis seismic data do not meet the basic
Available online 24 February 2013
minimum-phase assumption for the application of spiking and predictive deconvolution, therefore various
techniques, such as phase shift, are applied to the data, to be able to successfully perform deconvolution of
Keywords:
Data processing
vibroseis data.
Seismic This work analyzes the application of deconvolution techniques before and after cross-correlation on a real data
Vibroseis deconvolution set acquired for high resolution prospection of deep aquifers. In particular, we compare pre-correlation spiking
uncorrelated data and predictive deconvolution with Wiener filtering and with post-correlation time variant spectral whitening
deconvolution. The main result is that at small offsets, post cross-correlation spectral whitening deconvolution
and pre-correlation spiking deconvolution yield comparable results, while for large offsets the best result is
obtained by applying a pre-cross-correlation predictive deconvolution.
© 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction a bad base-plate coupling with inhomogeneous soil. In fact, when fi is

Different seismic sources can be used to investigate the subsurface
structures on land. The choice of the source depends on the target inves-
tigation as well as on the logistic problems in the investigated area. In
highly anthropized regions the use of non-destructive vibroseis source
with a controllable frequency range is preferable to dynamite. Fre-
quently, vibroseis seismic data contain many types of environmental
noise, and removal of this noise is essential for good results. In vibroseis
acquisition, the source wavelet is not an impulse, but a frequency mod-
ulated signal (the sweep) of long duration and controlled bandwidth is
generated. The source is composed of a plate mounted beneath trucks
and placed in contact with the surface of the ground. An actuator gener-
ates a force between a reaction mass and the base-plate driven by a pilot
signal. The signal detected by the geophone is represented by the
convolution of the earth reflectivity and the distorted sweep resulting
from the vibrator base plate ground force. To resolve underground
reflectivities the embedded sweep in the recorded traces is compressed
and removed by cross-correlation of the field data most often with the
pilot sweep used to drive the actuator. This process is extremely sensi-
tive to noise (road traffic, power lines, industries, etc.) present in the
data collected in urban environments. But other noise, such as har-
monics and subharmonics, ultra- and ultrasub-harmonics and chaotic
oscillatory noise can be produced during a vibroseis acquisition through
⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +39 0402140346.
E-mail address: lbaradello@ogs.trieste.it (L. Baradello).
the frequency of the pilot signal, the output contains distortion with fre-
quencies nfi or fi/m, where n and m are integers.
Several authors studied this harmonic distortion (Lerwill, 1981;
Sallas, 1984; Sallas and Weber, 1982) and suggested algorithms to
solve this problem and to improve the signal/noise ratio (Abd El-Aal,
2011; Lebedev and Beresnev, 2004; Li et al., 1995; Walker, 1995).
Sometimes, after the cross-correlation, to cancel the effect of an
unwanted convolution with source generated or environmental noise
and to increase resolution of the reflected signals, a linear deconvolution
filter is designed and applied. Conventional spike or predictive decon-
volutions are applied with a satisfactory result, even if the vibroseis data
after correlation are not at minimum-phase (Yilmaz, 2001). In theory, if
cross-correlation with pilot sweep is applied, the sweep collapses into a
zero-phase Klauder wavelet (autocorrelation of the sweep signal; Geyer,
1989), and the final data are the convolution between reflectivities and
the Klauder wavelet.
The satisfactory results obtained using conventional deconvolution
could be justified by the fact that real vibroseis seismic data are a convo-
lution between mixed-phase and minimum-phase filters. In fact, each
seismic signal (sweep too), traveling through a layered earth devi-
ates from original amplitude and phase because the earth acts as a
minimum-phase filter, that attenuates the low frequencies of the
sweep, less than the high frequencies (Futterman, 1962). Robinson and
Treitel (1977) showed that the transmission response of a layered medi-
um is minimum-phase. Dong et al. (2004) showed that vibroseis data,
at long offset, can have, approximately, minimum phase. The cross-
correlation between pilot sweep and recorded sweeps produces a

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 L. Baradello, F. Accaino / Journal of Applied Geophysics 92 (2013) 50–56 51

Fig. 1. Position map of the seismic line (base map from Google Earth, December 2012). The geological map is superimposed. The station number is also indicated.

wavelet with mixed-phase and only if the earth attenuation is low, the aquifers, while the second is characterized by alternating layers of
data can be approximated to a zero-phase (Pritchett, 1990). sand, gravel and clay, hosting important multi-layered confined aqui-
Over the years, several authors analyzed the deconvolution problem fers (see Fig. 1).
of mixed-phase data and tried several approaches and solutions. Gibson
and Larner (1984) converted the Klauder wavelet to a minimum-phase
equivalent and used minimum-phase deconvolution to remove both
the Klauder wavelet and the earth attenuation, leaving a zero-phase re-
sult. Cambois (2000) has not used the pre-whitening method as Gibson
and Larner but adjusted the low frequencies of the sweep, obtaining a
good minimum-phase equivalent. Porsani and Ursin (1998) created
an algorithm for mixed‐phase deconvolution valid only for pulses
whose Z-transform has no zeros on the unit circle. Carlini and Storer
(1991) tried a deterministic and statistic approach to process the phase
signal. Tygel et al. (1991) solved the problem of extracting a mixed‐
delay source wavelet from a point‐source seismogram without any fur-
ther assumptions about the source pulse or the model parameters.
In this paper, we investigate the potential of the deconvolution on
the uncorrelated data to remove the noise that was already discussed
by Ristow and Jurczyk (1975). They compared deconvolution opera-
tors (calculated with Wiener method) before and after correlation.
They showed that this method reduces mono-frequency disturbs of
unwanted oscillating events. We applied this method to a high reso-
lution seismic line investigating deep aquifers located close to the
water spring line of the Friuli Plain (North-East Italy). The water
spring line is the area where the leakage of water from the water
table of the upper Friuli Plain occurs, due to a rapid decrease of aver-
age permeability. Actually the water spring line divides the Friuli
Plain into two areas: the upper and lower Friuli Plain. The first is char-
acterized by the presence of gravel deposits, which host unconfined

Table 1
Acquisition parameters.

Sample rate 1 ms
Sweep length 10 s
Record length 13 s
Frequency range 10–250 Hz
Shot interval 10 m
Fig. 2. Example of uncorrelated (A) and correlated shots with ground force (B). The
Receiver interval 10 m
black arrow indicates the factory noise, while the white arrow indicates an example
Channels 160
of traffic noise. Trace interval is 10 m.
52 L. Baradello, F. Accaino / Journal of Applied Geophysics 92 (2013) 50–56

Fig. 3. Autocorrelation of a near offset trace (A) and of the ground force (B).

The stratigraphy of the area is composed by Miocene Molasse de- The source was a MiniVib IVI T-2500 mounted on a small truck, weighing
posits overlaid by more than 500 m thick Plio-quaternary sediments 65,000 kg and capable of generating a frequency modulated signal from
(Nicolich et al., 2004). Two shallow aquifers are located around 30 and 10 to 550 Hz. A linear up-sweep from 10 Hz to 250 Hz with a vibration
180 m depth, and a deep aquifer is present at about 500 m (Giustiniani time of 10 s in addition to a taper of 200 ms was used. The taper is applied
et al., 2008), all within the Plio-quaternary sequences. to reduce Gibbs' oscillations. The receiver and shot interval was 10 m,
The seismic line object in this study (Fig. 1) starts in the North-East with a single vibration per VP, for a maximum fold of 80. The data were
where the subsoil is well known (Giustiniani et al., 2009) and the envi-
ronmental noise is small, and ends 1.5 km South-West where the envi-
ronmental noise is high, generated by road traffic and by the activity of
some factories.
We compare the results from a standard processing after cross-
correlation with results obtained by deconvolution applied before
cross-correlation. Both statistical (spike and predictive) and an in-
verse Wiener filter (using the sweep) deconvolutions were also ap-
plied. The final stack sections obtained with different processing are
also shown and discussed.

2. Methods

The seismic line starts in an area (North-East) with no significant en-

vironmental noise and ends in an area (South-West) with significant en-
vironmental noise (parallel to a main street and close to an industrial
area). The seismic line (2 km long) was acquired using a 24 bit telemetric
DMT-Summit acquisition system, with single vertical 10 Hz geophones.

Fig. 4. Uncorrelated shot after the application of predictive deconvolution. The figure Fig. 5. Comparison of the selected shot after the application of spiking (A), and predictive
must be compared with Fig. 2A. Trace interval is 10 m. deconvolution (B) before cross-correlation. Trace interval is 10 m.
 L. Baradello, F. Accaino / Journal of Applied Geophysics 92 (2013) 50–56
Fig. 6. Comparison of a shot after the application of a zero-phase deconvolution after
cross-correlation (A), and after the application of a Wiener filtering (B) to the selected
shot data. Trace interval is 10 m.
acquired at a sample rate of 1 ms and an uncorrelated record length of
13 s was adopted (see Table 1).
An uncorrelated (a) and correlated (b) shot record, using as correla-
tion sweep the ground force, that is the total compressive force exerted
by the earth upon the vibrator base plate, is shown in Fig. 2. Two arrows
in the uncorrelated data (Fig. 2A) show the different types of noises
along the seismic line. The black arrow indicates factory noise, while
the white one indicates traffic noise. After cross-correlation, the noise
from the factories (70–90 and 110–130 stations) and from the traffic
on the road (hyperbolic signals) hides reflections.
We tested the application of spike and predictive deconvolution to
uncorrelated data to efficiently remove not the source generated noise,
but primarily the environmental noise.
In order to perform the deconvolution two parameters must be
known: the operator length and prediction lag.
To define the operator length, the autocorrelation of the pilot sweep
and of selected traces was calculated. The operator length is usually
chosen approximately equal to the length of the first transient zone of
the autocorrelation (Yilmaz, 2001). In Fig. 3, the autocorrelations of
the sweep (right), corresponding to the Klauder wavelet, and of the
near trace (left) are shown. Gibson and Larner (1984) suggested as
operator length the Klauder wavelet length or greater. We adopted an
operator length of 500 ms that furnished comparable result with
respect to lengths of 1000 ms and 5000 ms.
A gap parameter, equal to the sample rate and to the first zero
cross of the autocorrelation was adopted for spike and predictive
53
deconvolution, respectively (Costain et al., 2004). The second zero
cross was also tested but was discarded because it gave poor quality
results.
We introduced an artificial level of percentage white noise (0.1%
of the total power in the signal) to ensure numerical stability to the
deconvolution algorithm.
In Fig. 4, an uncorrelated shot with the application of the predic-
tive deconvolution is shown. Comparing this figure with Fig. 2A, we
can note that the noise in the interval from stations 70 to 90 is re-
moved, while the noise caused by road traffic is only attenuated.
A comparison of the results after pre-correlation spiking and pre-
dictive deconvolution, followed by cross-correlation, is shown in
Fig. 5A and B respectively.
In order to compare the results obtained using pre-correlation
deconvolution with other methods, a Wiener filter, using the pilot
sweep as source signal, and a zero-phase deconvolution after the
cross-correlation, are shown in Fig. 6A and B.
The Wiener filter is a filter that transforms a recorded wavelet to a
desired wavelet minimizing the least squares error between input
and output (Yilmaz, 2001).
The zero-phase deconvolution uses operators derived from the
input amplitude spectra of the data to achieve a user-specified output,
without modifying the phase of the input trace, also called Time Variant
Spectral Whitening (TVSW) (Yilmaz, 2001).
The stacked sections obtained without deconvolution (Fig. 7A),
applying pre-correlation predictive deconvolution (Fig. 7B), and
applying post-correlation zero-phase deconvolution (Fig. 7C) are
compared.
3. Discussion
The purpose of this paper is to highlight the usefulness of decon-
volution to increase the signal to noise ratio of near surface high resolu-
tion vibroseis seismic data. The filtering effect of cross-correlation can
become a problem when minimum-phase deconvolution is applied, be-
cause the seismic data become a zero-phase or a mixed-phase after the
cross-correlation, and only with a minimum phase wavelet the filter coef-
ficients form a convergent series and become realizable (Brittle et al.,
2001; Yilmaz, 2001). To perform the deconvolution, a phase shift to
vibroseis data or a zero-phase deconvolution is indispensable. To
avoid the phase deviation effects, we tested the application of the pre-
correlation deconvolution comparing spiking, predictive and Wiener
filtering.
Results shown in Fig. 4 evidence that pre-correlation deconvolution
is a useful tool to remove the environmental noise, and highlight an in-
crement in the signal to noise ratio, and reflections are better identifi-
able then after the cross-correlation (see Fig. 5B).
Spiking and predictive deconvolution boost, as expected, the high
frequencies content of the amplitude spectra (Fig. 8), removing par-
tially the filtering effect of the earth. In fact, the higher frequencies
of the signal are more attenuated than the frequencies of the pilot
sweep and, therefore, the cross-correlation of the recorded sweep and
the pilot sweep is not an autocorrelation pulse (Ristow and Jurczyk,
1975).
If we compare the results of pre-correlation spiking and predictive
deconvolution (Fig. 5), applied to the shot of Fig. 2, we can observe
that at near offsets (up to about 500 m in this case) the improvement
in resolution after spiking deconvolution (Fig. 5A) is higher than after
predictive deconvolution (Fig. 5B), as recognized also by the two am-
plitude spectra of Fig. 8. On the other hand, for medium and large off-
sets (from 500 m to 1200 m) the reflections are better identifiable
after the predictive deconvolution (Fig. 5B). Comparing the phase spec-
tra of pre-correlation spiking (Fig. 8B) and of predictive deconvolution
(Fig. 8C) with not deconvolved data (Fig. 8A), we can observe that pre-
dictive deconvolution preserves better the phase, while the spiking
deconvolution, as expected, changes the phase spectrum, especially in
54 L. Baradello, F. Accaino / Journal of Applied Geophysics 92 (2013) 50–56

Fig. 7. Comparison of stacked sections: not deconvolved (A), with the application of TVSW (B), and with the application of pre-correlation predictive deconvolution (C). CDP interval is 5 m.

the interval from 10 to 40 Hz. In fact, the most prominent effects of the
nonunity prediction lag are suppression of high frequencies and preser-
vation of the overall spectral shape of input data (Yilmaz, 2001). Anoth-
er important point is that spiking deconvolution doesn't produce a
zero-phase wavelet because of the presence of noise (Berkhout,
1977). The phase spectrum of TVSW (Fig. 8D) shows a phase change
with respect to not deconvolved data. Hence, analysis of the amplitude
and phase spectra shows that, in this case, predictive deconvolution
furnished a good result preserving the signal better than spiking and
TVSW.
Again a test was performed by applying an inverse Wiener filter
using as input the sweep and the Klauder wavelet as expected output
(Fig. 6B), but the result evidences that the noise is not removed as in
the case of the deconvolution application (Fig. 5).
In order to compare the result of the pre-correlation deconvolution
with respect to the deconvolution after the cross-correlation, a TVSW
was applied. In Fig. 6A, we can see how the TVSW at large offset is
comparable to the predictive deconvolution before cross-correlation
(Fig. 5B); for small offsets the pre-correlation predictive deconvolution
helps to resolve the reflections, removing the internal multiples (ringing).
The stacked sections presented in Fig. 7 are obtained by applying a
simple processing consisting of a correction for the geometrical spread-
ing and a trace equalization. Comparison between section with and
without pre-correlation deconvolution, highlights that the application
of the deconvolution (before or after the cross-correlation) increases
the signal/noise ratio and resolution.
The reflections at 220 ms and 500 ms are identifiable in all three sec-
tions, but in Fig. 7C, where the section with pre-correlation predictive
deconvolution is plotted, they are clearer and more continuous. In partic-
ular, the reflection at about 220 ms is better recognizable between sta-
tions 80 and 130, where strong environmental noise caused by factories
is present. In Fig. 7C, a deeper reflection at about 800 ms (near the top
of the Miocene Molasse) is highlighted. Between 0 ms and 200 ms, reflec-
tions in data with pre-correlation and post-correlation deconvolution
 L. Baradello, F. Accaino / Journal of Applied Geophysics 92 (2013) 50–56 55

Fig. 8. Amplitude and phase spectra: correlated data (A), correlated data with application of spiking deconvolution before cross-correlation (B), correlated data with application of
predictive deconvolution before cross-correlation (C), correlated data and application of TVSW (D).

(Fig. 7C and B) show a comparable resolution, while in data without
deconvolution (Fig. 7A) the shallower events between stations 80 and
140 are affected by environmental noise that creates false reflections.
The stacked section, shown in this paper, if compared to seismic
data acquired in a neighboring area (Giustiniani et al., 2008) affected
by low levels of environmental noise, allows us to identify the aqui-
fers targeted at 200 ms and 500 ms. Only the shallower reflections
are less continuous with respect to the data of Giustiniani et al.
(2008) due to the greater environmental noise. Shallow structures
evidenced in proximity of the factories are probably due to noise. In
fact after the application of deconvolution they are attenuated (see
cdp 70–80 in Fig. 7).
4. Conclusions
Correlation with pilot sweep can degrade the vibroseis data collect-
ed in areas where strong environment noise is present, causing a
spreading of the noises along the entire trace length especially in
high resolution prospecting and a short record length (in our case 1 s
TWT). Many authors have performed several types of deconvolutions
to improve the signal/noise of vibroseis data. Deconvolution in vibroseis
data is usually applied after cross-correlation or using zero-phase
deconvolution or to design a filter that converts Klauder wavelet to its
minimum phase equivalent (Ristow and Jurczyk, 1975). Ristow and
Jurczyk also applied the pre-correlation deconvolution in order to
remove mono-frequencies as for instance of 50 Hz. In this paper we ev-
idence that pre-correlation predictive deconvolution is a useful tool to
remove other types of noise, such as traffic and factory noise.
The best result was obtained by applying a pre-correlation predic-
tive deconvolution using as gap the first zero cross of the autocorrela-
tion function and an operator length of 500 ms, larger than the length
of the Klauder wavelet (300 ms). Predictive deconvolution can be ap-
plied to uncorrelated field data, which can be considered to be ap-
proximately at minimum-phase. In fact, the earth acts on the sweep
as a minimum-phase filter, so that performing the deconvolution on
uncorrelated data makes the minimum phase assumption more real-
istic with respect to the cross-correlated data that are close to the
zero phase. The results evidenced that the choice of pre-correlation
spiking or predictive deconvolution is a function of geometry acquisi-
tion. In our case until offset about 500 m spiking deconvolution fur-
nishes a better resolution with respect to predictive deconvolution,
while for offsets greater than 500 m the last one gives better results.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by P.R.I.N 2008 research project
“Geophysical characterization of deep aquifer of the Friuli Venezia
Giulia western plains”.
The authors are very grateful to the anonymous reviewers for
their incisive and constructive comments which improved the paper.
56 L. Baradello, F. Accaino / Journal of Applied Geophysics 92 (2013) 50–56
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