Application of the EEMD method for distinction and suppression of motion-induced noise in grounded electrical source airborne TEM system

Abstract Airborne electromagnetic (AEM) detection is an important method for obtaining subsurface conductivity distribution. However, the response of observation system includes not only the underground media response but also a variety of noise components. The motion-induced noise is one of the main noise sources of the airborne electromagnetic data, which has a low frequency, large amplitude, non-periodic and other characteristics. In this paper, we will introduce the principle of the ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD) method and use it for decomposing electromagnetic signal of grounded electrical source airborne transient electromagnetic system. The EEMD method will decompose the electromagnetic signal into multi-stage intrinsic mode function (IMF) components and distinguish the IMF component containing the motion-induced noise. Then we can get the noise-free signal by reconstructing remaining IMF components and residual component. We use the EEMD method for the theoretical signal correction and compared with the cubic spline method, the correction result indicates that the EEMD method can fit the motion-induced noise more accurately with a higher signal-to-noise ratio. To verify the effect of the application of the EEMD method, we went to Weifang city, Shandong province, East China, for the concealed fault investigation. The correction result of the time series shows that the EEMD method can suppress the motion-induced noise more effectively than the cubic spline method. Compared with the uncorrected data and the corrected data using the cubic spline method, the result shows that the fake anomaly can be nearly avoided and a more clear geological structure can be obtained through the corrected data with EEMD method. The results also prove that the EEMD method is a practical as well as effective method for the motion-induced noise suppression.