Interpretation of physical status of arrival picks for microseismic source location

Abstract

The automatic recognition of a microseismic event usually relies on two criteria: threshold voltage level and event recognition time window. Current microseismic source location techniques are severaly limited because the physical status of an arrival pick is not known. This paper presents a theory for the identification of the physical status of an arrival pick. It consists of an arrival time difference analysis and a residual analysis. The theory can be used to discriminate various types of arrival picks critical for microseismic source location. An event-based velocity model can then be established and used to determine the source location more accurately. The theory provides a unique approach that may be utilized in various automatic acoustic/seismic processing systems.