The robustness of seismic attenuation measurements using fixed- and variable-window time-frequency transforms

Frequency-based methods for measuring seismic attenuation are used commonly in exploration geophysics. To measure the spectrum of a nonstationary seismic signal, different methods are available, including transforms with time windows that are either fixed or systematically varying with the frequency being analyzed. We compare four time-frequency transforms and show that the choice of a fixed- or variable-window transform affects the robustness and accuracy of the resulting attenuation measurements. For fixed-window transforms, we use the short-time Fourier transform and Gabor transform. The S-transform and continuous wavelet transform are analyzed as the variable-length transforms. First we conduct a synthetic transmission experiment, and compare the frequency-dependent scattering attenuation to the theoretically predicted values. From this procedure, we find that variable-window transforms reduce the uncertainty and biasof the resulting attenuation estimate, specifically at the upper and lower ends of th...

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