Frequency-to-time Transformation by a Diffusion Expansion Method

Electromagnetic (EM) methods are generally divided into frequency-domain EM (FDEM) and time-domain EM (TDEM) methods, depending on the source waveform. The FDEM and TDEM fields are mathematically related by the Fourier transformation, and the TDEM field can thus be obtained as the Fourier transformation of FDEM data. For modeling in time-domain, we can use fast frequency-domain modeling codes and then convert the results to the time domain with a suitable numerical method. Thus, frequency-to-time transformations are of interest to EM methods, which is generally attained through fast Fourier transform. However, faster frequency-to-time transformation is required for the 3D inversion of TDEM data or for the processing of vast air-borne TDEM data. The diffusion expansion method (DEM) is one of smart frequency-to-time transformation methods. In DEM, the EM field is expanded into a sequence of diffusion functions with a known frequency dependence, but with unknown diffusion-times that must be chosen based on the data to be transformed. Especially, accuracy of DEM is sensitive to the diffusion-time. In this study, we developed a method to determine the optimum range of diffusion-time values, minimizing the RMS error of the frequency-domain data approximated by the diffusion expansion. We confirmed that this method produces accurate results over a wider time range for a homogeneous half-space and two-layered model.