Real-time determination of the signal-to-noise ratio of partly coherent seismic time series

A suitable measure of the quality of signals used in exploration seismics is the signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) of the recorded signals (traces). However, the S/N of the single unstacked traces may vary considerably due to changing weather conditions during the exploration session. Since it is of great practical interest to be able to monitor the S/N while the traces are recorded an approach for fast real-time determination of the S/N of seismic time series is proposed. The described method is based on an iterative procedure utilizing the trace-to-trace coherence, but unlike procedures known so far it uses calculated initial guesses and stop criterions. This significantly reduces the computational burden of the procedure so that real-time capabilities are obtained