GEOPHYSICS, VOL. 69, NO. 3 (MAY-JUNE 2004); P. 789802, 13 FIGS., 2 TABLES. 10.1190/1.

1759465

Improvement in GPR coherent noise attenuation using -p and wavelet transforms

Luigia Nuzzo and Tatiana Quarta
in seismic common-midpoint (CMP) processing. Even if one stacks consecutive traces relative to different, but very near, reection points in the far denser radar sections, the improvement is generally moderate because high stacks will eliminate meaningful features, such as steep low-velocity hyperbolas due to subsurface objects. Moreover, GPR air waves create other types of noise (such as reections from above-surface objects) in the time window of interest. In any case, incoherent noise can be reduced by averaging over many traces, whereas the identication and removal of coherent noise still remains a research topic in GPR. Two common types of coherent noise in GPR data are system ringing and surface scattering. System ringing appears as horizontal or subhorizontal periodic events which cross the whole section. This problem is particularly evident where wet or clay-rich soils cause strong near-surface reections. System ringing also occurs with bad antenna contact or with a slightly elevated antenna. The similarity of the frequency content of these noise modes to that of the useful signal makes frequency ltering unsuitable. Also, low-cut spatial frequency lters or other standard ltering methods frequently yield unsatisfactory results. In practice, the simplest way to remove system ringing is to subtract an average trace from all traces, commonly known as background removal (Conyers and Goodman, 1997; Nobes, 1999). However, where the subsurface stratigraphy is almost horizontal, this procedure can remove the desired horizontal signal component along with the noise, and drastically reduce the reector continuity. Fortunately, ringing is often more dramatic in the deeper section, and so a modied background removal strategy can preserve horizontal reected energy in shallow data. Another way is to model a noise trace by multiplying the average trace by means of a gaining function made of zeros in the upper part and ones in the lower part, connected by a taper zone to avoid edge effects (Leckebusch, 2000). To locally lter coherent noise, Young and Sun (1999) proposed the domain lter, consisting of a local frequency-wavenumber ( f -k ) lter designed interactively and applied over a userspecied region in the f -k and t -x planes.

ABSTRACT

We present a new application of modern ltering techniques to ground-penetrating radar (GPR) data processing for coherent noise attenuation. We compare the performance of the discrete wavelet transform (DWT) and the linear Radon transform ( -p) to classical time-space and Fourier domain methods using a synthetic model and real data. The synthetic example simulates problems such as system ringing and surface scattering, which are common in real cases. The eld examples illustrate the removal of nearly horizontal but variable-amplitude noise features. In such situations, classical space-domain techniques require several trials before nding an appropriate averaging window size. Our comparative analysis indicates that the DWT method is better suited for local ltering than are 2D frequency-domain ( f -k ) techniques, although the latter are computationally efcient. Radon-based methods are slightly superior than the techniques previously used for local directional ltering, but they are slow and quite sensitive to the p -sampling rate, p -range, and sizes of the muting zone. Our results conrm that Radon and wavelet methods are effective in removing noise from GPR images with minimal distortions of the signal.

INTRODUCTION

Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) is increasingly being used for near-surface studies. Due to kinematic analogies between electromagnetic and mechanical waves, GPR data are currently processed by techniques developed for reection seismic software, although there are remarkable differences both in waveeld properties and in the geometries used to collect the data. In particular, the most common GPR antenna acquisition geometry (monostatic or bistatic, equivalent to zero or constant offset in reection seismic surveys) does not allow signalto-noise ratio enhancement through stacking procedures, as

Manuscript received by the Editor March 4, 2002; revised manuscript received October 7, 2003. University of Lecce, Department of Material Science, Via per Arnesano, 73100 Lecce, Italy. E-mail: luigina.nuzzo@unile.it; tatiana.quarta@unile.it. c 2004 Society of Exploration Geophysicists. All rights reserved. 789

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Standard f -k methods or domain ltering have been used to remove other coherent noise, such as linear, steeply dipping or hyperbolic-shaped events generated by aboveground obstacles (walls, trees, poles, power lines, or fences) or buried vertical boundary reections (Sun and Young, 1995; Grasmueck, 1996). In many cases, due to geometric reasons, only the asymptotes of the air-diffraction hyperbolas are visible on radar sections. The success of f -k techniques, namely pie slice or fan ltering (Robinson and Durrani, 1986; Yilmaz, 1987), depends on the degree to which the scattered events map into distinct sidelobes in the f -k domain, away from the region of the subhorizontal reections. Less common methods for surface scattering attenuation involve CMP stacking, modeling and migration at the air-wave velocity (Sun and Young, 1995; Bano et al., 2000), and noise removal by subtraction (Young et al., 1995). In the latter case, the scattered event is aligned using the proper moveout velocity, enhanced through a running mean, unattened, and subtracted from the original data. In this paper, we compare the results from new ltering procedures for system-ringing and linear-noise feature attenuation with those from some of the above-mentioned techniques, based on synthetic and real data. The new approaches are essentially based on the linear Radon transform (RT), or - p , and the more recent wavelet transform (WT). Both transforms have already been applied to reection seismic and potentialeld data, but rarely to GPR data.
METHODOLOGY

The discrete wavelet transform (DWT) is a special integral transform (Mallat, 1989; Daubechies, 1992; Meyer, 1993) which has found a wide variety of applications in image processing and in the analysis and ltering of geophysical signals (Kumar Table 1.

and Foufoula-Georgiou, 1994; Fedi et al., 2000). Since the basis functions depend on a scale parameter, linked to the frequency, and a translation parameter, related to the position along the time or space axis, the wavelet decomposition allows the characteristics of the signal to be localized in both time and frequency. This property makes the DWT a powerful tool for analyzing nonstationary signals, whose frequency content varies with time. A summary of the terminology commonly used is provided in Table 1, and three examples of wavelets are shown in Figure 1. The 2D scale or frequency versus time mapping of 1D time signals provided by the 1D multiresolution analysis (MRA) allows features of specic scales to be locally ltered, without substantially altering the rest of the data. At a xed decomposition level j , the MRA allows a function to be written as the sum of a low-resolution approximation and several differentresolution details. The approximation and details are a linear combination of scaled and translated versions of the father and mother wavelets, respectively, with decomposition coefcients obtained as scalar products of the function with the respective father or mother wavelet. The number of details is j for the 1D MRA and 3 j for the 2D MRA (Table 1). The MRA is not unique, but depends on the wavelet used from among the numerous available bases, such as Daubechies, Symlets and Coiets (Daubechies, 1992). For seismic data, some authors suggest selecting the wavelet shape best tuned to capture those features of the signal of interest for analysis or ltering (Grubb and Walden, 1997; Carrozzo et al., 2002). The 1D DWT has been successfully applied to seismic processing on a trace-by-trace basis to suppress the low-frequency dispersive ground roll by simply zeroing the wavelet coefcients in the time-scale areas corresponding to the groundroll energy (Deighan and Watts, 1997). Moreover, the 2D

Glossary of terminology used for the discrete wavelet transform. Denition Localized (i.e., with compact support) oscillating function having zero mean and some zero higher-order moments. An orthonormal basis for L 2 ( R ) whose elements {m ,n ; m , n Z } are dilated and translated versions of the mother wavelet. Z denotes the integers. Positive real number having the effect of dilating (a > 1) or contracting (a < 1) the function (t ). For the DWT, usually a = 2m , with m Z . Real number causing (t ) to be shifted by b positions. For the DWT, usually b = na = n 2m , with m , n Z . The Hilbert space of square integrable functions. The closure of the set over which a function is nonzero. Smoothing function having unit mean, orthogonal to all its translates at any xed scale but not to its dilates, and orthogonal to all wavelets at any scale. Orthogonal and compactly supported wavelet bases: is asymmetric with N vanishing moments; db1 is also named Haar basis. Orthogonal and compactly supported wavelet bases: is near symmetric with N vanishing moments. Orthogonal and compactly supported wavelet bases: is near symmetric; both and have N vanishing moments. Decomposition of a signal or image f at different degrees of resolution or levels. At a xed level j , the signal f is split into a low-resolution part (approximation) and many high-resolution components (details). Low-resolution version of a signal or image f at a xed level j obtained by convolving f with the scaling function (at level j ) acting as low-pass lter. High-resolution components of the original signal or image f obtained from the difference between the approximation at the previous level and that at the current coarser level. For 2D signals at each level, there are three types of details: horizontal, vertical, and diagonal.

Name or symbol Mother wavelet, analyzing wavelet, or wavelet ( ) Wavelet basis Scale parameter (a ) Translation parameter (b) L 2( R) Support Father wavelet or scaling function ( ) Daubechies (db N ) Symlets (sym N ) Coiets (coif N ) Multiresolution analysis (MRA) Approximation Details

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DWT, like the 2D Fourier transform (FT) or f -k transform (Bracewell, 1978), can be useful for analyzing and ltering sloping features, especially when treating phenomena occurring in a local region of the space-time plane, as well as in a local region of the 2D frequency plane. By analyzing band-limited seismic data, Cohen and Chen (1993) showed that the 2D MRA can provide, although in a fuzzy sense, a separation of dipping segments that map to the different detail panels. The bounding angles can be expressed in terms of the temporal and spatial Nyquist frequencies or, alternatively, in terms of the corresponding sampling intervals, t and x , according to the following equations:

1 = arctan 2 = arctan 3 = arctan

t , x t , 2 x 2 t . x

(1) (2) (3)

Dips lower than 1 map to the horizontal panels, whereas those greater than 1 map to the vertical panels. Similarly, only dips greater than 2 and less than 3 map to the diagonal panels. In the case of dip separation between signal and noise linear features, an efcient dip ltering can be performed through 2D wavelet methods by simply zeroing all (global ltering) or part (local ltering) of the coefcients relative to the panels containing the noise lineaments. We employ 2D and 1D DWT-based approaches to lter GPR data. In the 1D approach, we process data on a row-by-row instead of a trace-by-trace basis to account for the horizontal

variability of the noise. In both cases, we take advantage of the MRA to differentiate the signal from noise. The linear Radon transform (RT) maps a slanted line in a 2D domain to a point in the Radon domain. In seismic data processing the linear RT is commonly known as slant-stack or - p transform, since it performs a summation along slanted lines with intercept time and slope p (Durrani and Bisset, 1984; Yilmaz, 1987). In seismic processing, the linear and, less frequently, the parabolic (or -q ) and hyperbolic RT have been used for a variety of purposes, such as plane wave decomposition and velocity analysis (Stoffa et al., 1981; Diebold and Stoffa, 1981; Schultz, 1982), multiple suppression (Foster and Mosher, 1992; Zhou and Greenhalgh, 1994), wave separation and ltering (McMechan and Yedlin, 1981), and inversion of refraction data (Clayton and McMechan, 1981). In other areas, the linear RT has been used primarily for the analysis of geological and geophysical lineaments and for directional ltering (Pawlowski, 1997; Sykes and Das, 2000). For sampled data, the discrete Radon transform (DRT) has been dened (Beylkin, 1987; Yilmaz, 1989). For computational efciency, it is classically implemented in the temporal frequency domain through least-squares inversion (Lines and Treitel, 1984). In order to limit aliasing problems, Turner (1990) pointed out the importance of the proper selection of the sampling intervals and ranges in the Radon domain. For , a reasonable choice is to use the same sampling interval and range of t . For p , the sampling interval, p , and the absolute value of the maximum allowable range, pmax , are linked to the sampling interval and range in x , x and xr , and to the maximum frequency f max :

p< pmax

1 , xr f max 1 . 2 f max x

(4) (5)

The linear RT is useful for dip ltering and can be applied to 2D data sets with linear coherent noise. Based on the fact that lines in the data domain map to points in the - p domain, dip ltering can be achieved by zeroing selected small zones centered on the corresponding points in the Radon domain, followed by an inverse transformation. Since parallel lines in the t -x domain map to distinct points in the - p domain, - p methods seem more suited for local dip ltering than do f -k methods.
RESULTS

Synthetic data Our synthetic example consists of a 64 64 (binary) matrix with seven lines of different slopes (Figure 2a). The time delay t of each line is described by

t = + px = + x tan .

(6)

Figure 1. Examples of orthogonal, compactly-supported scaling functions ( ) and wavelets ( ): (a) Daubechies1 or Haar basis (db1), (b) Daubechies4 (db4), (c) Symlet4 (sym4).

The parameters for all the lines are shown in Table 2, and the sampling intervals are t = 0.67 ns and x = 0.1 m. Two steep lines (a and f ) might simulate the asymptotic tails of surfacescattering diffraction hyperbolas. Less steep or horizontal lines (b1b2 and c) could represent stratigraphic boundaries. Two closely spaced horizontal lines (d and e) could mimic system ringing.

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We designed two cascaded f -k fan lters to remove both the steep lines (Figures 2e and 2b) and the horizontal banding (Figures 2f and 2c). The results indicate that the rst lter is very effective, in spite of artifacts, while the second one eliminated the horizontal banding d and e along with the horizontal upper geological boundary b1, because all of them map to the same vertical line B in the f -k amplitude spectrum (Figure 2d). Similarly, events b2 and c have the same dip, and thus map to the same line C regardless of their position. Next, we tested a cascaded - p domain lter (Figure 3). To minimize aliasing effects we used p = 0.22 ns/m, according

Table 2. model. Line a b1 b2 c d e f

Constructing line parameters for the synthetic Intercept time (ns) 41 15 9 22 34 38 3 Slope p (ns/m) 6 0 2 2 0 0 8 Angle ( ) 80.6 0 63.5 63.5 0 0 82.9

to equation (4), but over an asymmetrical p range of 8 to 10 ns/m, slightly wider than that suggested by equation (5), to incorporate all the dips present in the data. Despite the characteristic wedge-shaped features, the peaks relative to all the lines are clearly identiable, which allows accurate estimation of their constructing parameters (Figure 3d). A simple p band-pass lter in - p domain (Figure 3e) removed the steeply dipping events (Figure 3b), whereas a low-pass lter (Figure 3f) was effective for ltering the horizontal ringing features, yet leaving the geologic interface practically undisturbed (Figure 3c). The artifacts are less evident than in the previous gure, but the preserved lines have lower amplitude. For most practical cases, this problem could be reduced by thresholding and amplifying the peaks before reconstruction. We also applied the 2D DWT methods to the synthetic data (Figure 4a) for comparison. We selected the Haar basis (db1; see Figure 1a), and carried out the 2D MRA to the third level. Figure 4b shows the nal approximation (a3 ) and the detail coefcients (h , v , and d ) for each level. The decomposition coefcients (Figure 4b) and the corresponding single-level reconstruction (Figure 4c) show that the horizontal and gently dipping lines map essentially to the horizontal panels, whereas the steeply dipping lines map primarily to the diagonal, but to a lower degree also to the horizontal and vertical panels. Using

Figure 2. Examples of f -k ltering to remove lines of different slopes. (a) Synthetic example in which dipping lines in the t -x domain map to radial lines in the f -k domain (d). Line a maps to A; b1, d and e map to B ; b2 and c map to C ; and f maps to F . (b) Filtered section where the steep lines a and f have been removed by means of the f -k lter (e). (c) Filtered section where horizontal lines b1, d , and e have been removed by means of the f -k lter (f).

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equations (1), (2), and (3) the bounding angles are 1 = 81.5 , 2 = 73.4 , and 3 = 85.7 . Only f , having a dip angle > 1 (Table 2), is expected in the vertical panels. Both a and f , having 2 < | | < 3 , should map mainly to the diagonal panels, but they can also map onto the horizontal and vertical ones. Nevertheless, the latter panels also contain weak traces of b2 and c, which should be conned to the horizontal panels since < 2 (Figures 4b and 4c). This example illustrates that a complete separation of the various dips is not achievable. However, undesired features can be remarkably reduced by acting on the corresponding panels. To lter out the steeply dipping events a and f (Figure 4a), we zeroed all the coefcients relative to the vertical and diagonal panels, as well as those of the approximation panel, although this also reduces the energy of the interesting features (Figure 5a). To attenuate the horizontal banding d and e, and the residual energy of the steep lines a and f , we performed an additional local ltering (Figure 5b) by zeroing all the horizontal coefcients outside the central part of the t -axis (1632 ns). Figure 5c shows the result of the same procedure using the db4 wavelet. Because of the longer support, the energy due to a and f is further reduced, although no better results are achieved for attenuating the horizontal banding and ensuring

the proper reconstruction of the nal part of line c. Hence, the wavelet has to be chosen in order to solve specic problems. More sophisticated local lters could give better results, but at the expense of time and simplicity of the method. Comparing Figures 5 and 3c, we note that the - p lter is more effective, but the DWT is a less time-consuming technique. Real data: System ringing attenuation The section shown in Figure 6a is a 512 256 unprocessed data matrix with x = 0.065 m and t = 0.117 ns. It was acquired with a 500-MHz antenna on a quite rough surface directly above an outcrop (Figure 6b) of thin, heavily fractured, and dipping beds of limestone and marl (Carrozzo et al., 2000). Some dipping reections are barely visible through the ringing and the low-frequency background noise. The ringing amplitude varies horizontally, and its frequency content is close to the dominant frequency of the signal propagating in the formation. The background masks some less intense and less continuous horizontal events in the shallower part, although their geological origin is questionable. Because of the similar frequency content, classical 1D bandpass lters are not suited for attenuating system ringing. The

Figure 3. Examples of - p ltering to remove lines of different slopes. (a) Synthetic example in which dipping lines in the t x domain, labeled by lowercase letters, map to points in the - p domain, labeled by the corresponding uppercase letters (d). (b) Filtered section where the steep lines a and f have been removed by means of the - p lter (e). (c) Filtered section where the horizontal noise d and e has been removed and the horizontal signal b1 preserved by means of the - p lter (f).

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Figure 4. Two-dimensional MRA. (a) Synthetic example with lines of different slopes. (b) Approximation (a 3) and detail coefcients (h : horizontal, v : vertical, d : diagonal) of the 2D MRA of (a) using the db1 wavelet basis up to the third decomposition level. (c) Lastlevel approximation ( A3) and horizontal ( H ), vertical (V ), and diagonal ( D ) detail panels reconstructed from the corresponding coefcient panels in (b).

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dipping reections and the diffraction hyperbolas can be enhanced by a suitable f -k lter. The f -k amplitude spectrum shows that the useful signal is mainly conned to the 01 GHz frequency band and heavily dominated by horizontal features that map to the vertical line at k = 0 m1 ( A in Figure 7b). Moreover the fragmentary sloping reections parallel to the main dipping feature (b in Figure 7a) map to the discontinuous slanted line B in Figure 7b. In Figure 7c, the original amplitude spectrum was multiplied by the product of two fan lters. One lter was designed to remove very steep dips and highfrequency (>1 GHz) random noise, and the other was a narrow velocity lter around the temporal frequency axis to remove the horizontal banding. A 2D inverse fast FT yields the ltered section in the time-space domain (Figure 7d). For the forward - p transform, we selected the frequency band 0.11.0 GHz and chose the p sampling p = 0.06 ns/m and the symmetrical p range from 8 to 8 ns/m, according to equations (4) and (5). Figure 7f shows the dominance of horizontally coherent energy that maps to p = 0 ns/m at intercept times lower than 8 ns (the direct coupling, A1) and greater than 30 ns (the ringing noise, A2). Very weak amplitude peaks are visible at p 4 ns/m (vertical solid line B ). They are difcult to recognize because of the limited and discontinuous nature of the sloping reections. Using the estimated velocity value of 0.1 m/ns, they correspond to a southward dip of about 20%, in agreement with the observed dip (Figure 6b). In particular the lowest dipping feature b in Figure 7e, whose intercept time would be greater than the maximum time range of 60 ns (dashed line extrapolation), maps to the peak marked by a star in Figure 7f. It is folded back due to the periodicity of the DRT. Zeroing out a narrow corridor around p = 0 ns/m for < 8 ns and > 30 ns (Figure 7g) and performing an inverse DRT effectively removes the noise without disturbing the central part of the section (Figure 7h). We also investigated the effectiveness of both 2D and 1D DWT methods for this eld example. Due to the similar results, we show only the sections ltered using the db4 wavelet,

Figure 6. (a) Radar prole acquired on an outcrop (close to the SS101 road, Lecce-Gallipoli, Apulia, Italy), showing variable amplitude system ringing. Horizontal solid lines evidence row 163 and row 342 (at 19 and 40 ns, respectively) analyzed in Figures 9a and 9b. (b) Photo of the outcrop showing fractured limestone and marl dipping beds. Line at top center is wooden pole.

Figure 5. Two-dimensional DWT ltering to remove lines of different slopes in the synthetic example of Figure 4a. (a) Global ltering using the db1 wavelet basis where only the horizontal detail coefcients have been preserved. (b) Local ltering using the db1 wavelet basis where only the horizontal detail coefcients relative to the central part of the gure have been preserved. (c) Same as (b) using the db4 wavelet basis.

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Figure 7. Implementation of f -k (rst column), and - p (second column) ltering techniques for system ringing attenuation. Horizontal noise map to A, and sloping reections parallel to b map to B in the f -k spectrum. The direct coupling and system ringing map to A1 and A2, respectively, and sloping reections parallel to b map to B in the - p domain. A restricted frequency band (0.11.0 GHz) for the - p transform automatically lters out the low-frequency background. The continuity of horizontal and dipping signals in the range 830 ns (solid arrows) is better preserved, and the ringing noise (dashed arrows) is better attenuated in (h) than in (d).

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although we also tested the Symlet sym4, which is the least asymmetric wavelet with the same support width (Figure 1). In the present situation, we expected a good separation between signal and horizontal coherent noise in the 2D MRA. The main sloping reections should map primarily into the vertical panels, because their estimated dip of about 4 ns/m corresponds to

a dip angle of 76.0 , greater than 1 = 60.9 and than 3 = 74.5 . We also expected some leakage into the diagonal panels because of the dip angles closeness to 3 . Performing a 2D MRA up to the fth level, the system ringing maps to the horizontal panels H 3 and H 4 in the range 3060 ns (Figure 8a). The ground-coupling rst arrival maps to

Figure 8. Two-dimensional DWT ltering for system ringing attenuation. (a) Reconstructed horizontal detail panels H 3, H 4, H 5, and last-level approximation A5, where the horizontal noise is mainly concentrated. (b) Global ltering obtained by zeroing all the coefcients corresponding to H 3, H 4, H 5, and A5. (b) Local ltering obtained by zeroing the horizontal coefcients corresponding to H 3, H 4, and H 5 outside the range 830 ns, and all the approximation coefcients.

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the horizontal panels H 4 and H 5, and the low-frequency background remains in the approximation panel A5 (Figure 8a). The result of zeroing all the coefcients relative to these panels is shown in Figure 8b. However, because some energy relative to the useful signal is contained in these horizontal panels in the range 830 ns, zeroing only the horizontal coefcients outside this range (local lter) can better preserve weak horizontal shallow events, as well as the continuity and amplitude of the dipping reections (Figure 8c). In addition, we tested a 1D DWT approach on rows instead of traces, because of spatial rather than temporal nonstationarity of the analyzed radar signal. In this example, the 1D MRA was carried out on two representative rows. The rst row, at 19 ns, was from the shallow zone, 030 ns, mainly dominated by the signal, and the second row, at 40 ns, was from the deeper part of the section dominated by the ringing noise (solid lines in Figure 6a). To account for the different variability of the long-wavelength noise in the upper and in the lower section, a different number of detail levels should be zeroed in the two zones. The MRA (Figures 9a and 9b) suggested that zeroing only the approximation coefcients is sufcient

to remove the slowly varying background in the 030 ns time interval. Also the detail coefcients of the fth level should be zeroed to suppress the more variable system ringing in the deeper zone. A nice feature of the ltered section (Figure 9c) is the absence of sharp transition at the boundary between the two zones (30 ns). It closely resembles the data obtained through 2D DWT global lter (Figure 8b). All the DWT and - p approaches perform better than the f -k (Figure 7d) and the classical background-removal lters (Figure 9d), which are unable to remove completely the horizontal banding (dashed arrows), because of its amplitude variation. Real data: Surface-scattering removal We adapted the same ltering techniques to remove surface scattering. The section shown in Figure 10a is a 510 460 matrix extracted from a prole recorded along a portion of a coastal street where a karstic cavity collapsed in 1992. The prole was recorded with a 200-MHz antenna on a calcarenitic formation to assess the presence of other underground cavities or fractured zones with saline or brackish water intrusion

Figure 9. Comparison between 1D DWT lters and background removal. Panels (a) and (b) show 1D MRA using the db4 wavelet of the rows marked by solid lines in Figure 6a. Line f is the original signal, D 1, . . . , D 5 are the details, and A5 is the last-level approximation. (c) One-dimensional DWT-ltered section obtained by zeroing the coefcients relative to A5 in the range 030 ns and those relative to A5 and D 5 in the range 3060 ns. (d) Filtered section using the classical background removal, showing residual ringing noise (arrows).

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Figure 10. Example of surface scattering. (a) Radar section recorded along a coastal street (Apulia, Italy) showing a diffraction hyperbola from an aerial telephone cable. (b) The hyperbolic window (within dashed lines) extracted for ltering. The solid lines indicate the 1D signals analyzed in Figure 13. Panels (c)(f) show space-domain and (g) and (h) transform-based ltering techniques. Depending on the window size, classical lters can produce artifacts or alter the signal (c), (d), (f). Good results are achieved through - p and DWT methods or running average subtraction using a proper window size (e), (g), (h).

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(Carrozzo et al., 2003). The surface-scattering effect, visible as a diffraction hyperbola with velocity v = 0.30 m/ns, is caused by an aerial telephone cable which traverses the street. The amplitude variation along the hyperbola might be caused by variations in ground-coupling that modify the radiation pattern. Such a data set provides an ideal example for testing the various ltering techniques because the hyperbola occurs in a mostly reection-free zone. Instead of attening the hyperbola, as in the case of NMO correction, we extracted, attened, ltered, and then reinserted in the original section a hyperbolic window delimited by the dashed lines in Figure 10b. In the next gures we compare the performance of the different procedures on the full section and along selected 1D signals (solid

lines in Figure 10b) extracted along horizontal (row), vertical (trace), or hyperbolic trajectories. Figure 10c, obtained by the subtraction of an overall constant average trace in the extracted matrix, shows that while diminishing the air diffraction amplitude near the apex of the hyperbola, an opposite-phase signal is created in the near zeroamplitude zones (e.g., at the right-tail). Figures 10d10f show that the results of a running-average subtraction lter strongly depends on the window size N . The longer lter ( N = 256) creates artifacts similar to those created by the background removal lter. The shorter the window ( N = 16), the lower are the amplitudes of both surface-scattering noise and meaningful signal. Hence, window sizes on the order of 60 traces (e.g.,

Figure 11. Implementation of the - p ltering technique for surface-scattering removal. (a) The extracted hyperbolic window. (b) The extracted matrix obtained by attening the hyperbolic window. The solid line marks row r18, analyzed in Figure 12. (c) The - p transform of the extracted matrix. (d) The - p lter obtained by muting the coefcients outside a small zone around p = 0 ns/m. (e) The ltered section containing the horizontal noise. (f) The noise-free data obtained by subtracting (e) from (b).

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Figure 10e) seem the most suitable, and they tend to minimize the signal mismatch at the hyperbolic-window edges. The - p ltered section is shown in Figure 10g, and the characteristics of the lter are shown in Figure 11. To pre-

Figure 12. One-dimensional MRA of a selected row (r18) of the extracted matrix (solid line in Figure 11b). Line f is the original signal, D 1, . . . , D 6 are the details, and A6 is the lastlevel approximation. The long-wavelength horizontal noise is substantially contained in A6 and D 6.

serve the high-frequency content, we adopted a modeling procedure in the - p domain instead of a muting process. In the extracted matrix (Figure 11b), the surface scattering became low-frequency horizontally-coherent noise. This disturbance was modeled with a forward - p transform over the 0.1 1.0 GHz band (Figure 11c), preserving the low- p band (0.75 to 0.75 ns/m) over the entire range (Figure 11d) and applying an inverse - p transformation (Figure 11e). By subtracting the ltered section from the original extracted matrix, we obtained the noise-free data (Figure 11f). The nal result shown in Figure 10g is of good quality, although the - p ltering is slow. The 1D DWT ltered section using the db4 wavelet is shown in Figure 10h. Figure 12 shows the MRA of a representative row (f) of the extracted matrix (r18 in Figure 11b). The lowfrequency noise is substantially contained in the highest level detail ( D 6) and in the approximation ( A6). The DWT lter, obtained by zeroing the coefcients relative to D 6 and A6 (Figure 10h), gives results comparable to those of the other techniques (Figures 10e and 10g), but it is simpler and faster. Other wavelets of the same support (Symlet4 or Coiet2) give similar results. To better appreciate the effect of the various lters, Figure 13 shows 1D signals along representative rows and traces of the full original and ltered matrices (row 281 and trace 229) or of the extracted ones (r18). Different letters represent corresponding lters shown in Figure 10. Background removal and running-average subtraction with N = 256 (c and d ) lead to insufcient removal of the disturbance. A running average subtraction with N = 16 causes heavy alteration of the signal ( f ). The most successful techniques are the running

Figure 13. Performance of the various ltering techniques on selected 1D signals extracted along the solid lines in Figure 10b. The dashed lines delimit the ltered zones. The label b denote the original signals, and the labels c, . . . , h denote the signals extracted from the ltered sections identied by the same letters in Figure 10.

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Nuzzo and Quarta Bracewell, R. N., 1978, The Fourier transform and its applications, 2nd edition: McGraw-Hill Book Company. Carrozzo, M. T., De Franco, R., De Luca, L., Luzio, D., Primiceri, R., Quarta, T., and Vitale, M., 2002, Wavelet correlation lter for wideangle seismic data: Geophysical Prospecting, 50, 547564. Carrozzo, M. T., Delle Rose, M., Federico, A., Leucci, G., Marras, V., Negri, S., and Nuzzo, L., 2003, Osservazioni geologiche e indagini geosiche sul carsismo della costa Neretina: Thalassia Salentina, 26, supplement, 111119. Carrozzo, M. T., Leucci, G., Margiotta, S., Negri, S., and Nuzzo, L., 2000, Applicazione della metodologia G.P.R. per la soluzione di problemi stratigraci: Bollettino Geosico, 23, 516. Clayton, R. W., and McMechan, G. A., 1981, Inversion of refraction data by wave eld continuation: Geophysics, 46, 860868. Cohen, J. K., and Chen, T., 1993, Quantitative dip bounds for the twodimensional discrete wavelet transform, in Mathematical Methods in Geophysical Imaging: Proceedings of SPIE, 2033, 140157. Conyers, L. B., and Goodman, D., 1997, Ground-penetrating radar An introduction for archaeologists: AltaMira Press. Daubechies, I., 1992, Ten lectures on wavelets: Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. Deighan, A. J., and Watts, D. R., 1997, Ground-roll suppression using the wavelet transform: Geophysics, 62, 18961903. Diebold, J. B., and Stoffa, P. L., 1981, The traveltime equation, tau- p mapping, and inversion of common midpoint data: Geophysics, 46, 238254. Durrani, T. S., and Bisset, D., 1984, The Radon transform and its properties: Geophysics, 49, 11801187. Fedi, M., Lenarduzzi, L., Primiceri, R., and Quarta, T., 2000, Localized denoising ltering using the wavelet transform: Pure and Applied Geophysics, 157, 14631491. Foster, D. J., and Mosher, C. C., 1992, Suppression of multiple reections using the Radon transform: Geophysics, 57, 386395. Grasmueck, M., 1996, 3-D ground-penetrating radar applied to fracture imaging in gneiss: Geophysics, 61, 10501064. Grubb, H. J., and Walden, A. T., 1997, Characterizing seismic time series using the discrete wavelet transform: Geophysical Prospecting, 45, 183205. Kumar, P., and Foufoula-Georgiou, E., 1994, Wavelets in geophysics: Academic Press Inc. Leckebusch, J., 2000, Two- and three-dimensional ground-penetrating radar surveys across a medieval choir: A case study in archaeology: Archaeological Prospection, 7, 189200. Lines, L. R., and Treitel, S., 1984, A review of least-squares inversion and its application to geophysical problems: Geophysical Prospecting, 32, 159186. Mallat, S., 1989, A theory for multiresolution signal decomposition: The wavelet representation: IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 11, 674693. McMechan, G. A., and Yedlin, M. J., 1981, Analysis of dispersive waves by wave eld transformation: Geophysics, 46, 869874. Meyer, Y., 1993, Wavelets: Algorithms and applications: Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. Nobes, D. C., 1999, Geophysical surveys of burial sites: A case study of the Oaro urupa: Geophysics, 64, 357367. Pawlowski, R. S., 1997, Use of slant stack for geologic or geophysical map lineament analysis: Geophysics, 62, 17741778. Robinson, E. A., and Durrani, T. S., 1986, Geophysical signal processing: Prentice-Hall International. Schultz, P. S., 1982, A method for direct estimation of interval velocities: Geophysics, 47, 16571671. Stoffa, P. L., Buhl, P., Diebold, J. B., and Wenzel, F., 1981, Direct mapping of seismic data to the domain of intercept time and ray parameterA plane-wave decomposition: Geophysics, 46, 255267. Sun, J., and Young, R. A., 1995, Recognizing surface-scattering in ground-penetrating radar data: Geophysics, 60, 13781385. Sykes, M. P., and Das, U. C., 2000, Directional ltering for linear feature enhancement in geophysical maps: Geophysics, 65, 17581768. Turner, G., 1990, Aliasing in the tau- p transform and the removal of spatially aliased coherent noise: Geophysics, 55, 14961503. Yilmaz, O., 1987, Seismic data processing: SEG. 1989, Velocity-stack processing: Geophysical Prospecting, 37, 357382. Young, R. A., Deng, Z., and Sun, J., 1995, Interactive processing of GPR data: The Leading Edge, 14, 275280. Young, R. A., and Sun, J., 1999, Revealing stratigraphy in groundpenetrating radar data using domain ltering: Geophysics, 64, 435 442. Zhou, B., and Greenhalgh, S. A., 1994, Linear and parabolic - p transforms revised: Geophysics, 59, 11331149.

average subtraction with N = 64, - p , and 1D DWT (e, g , and h in Figure 13). They yield the best preservation of signal characteristics along the different directions and the lowest edge effects.
CONCLUSIONS

The results of this work show the effectiveness of - p and DWT ltering compared with the classical f -k and runningaverage subtraction, for attenuating common, undesired GPR features, such as system ringing and surface scattering. In 1D and 2D DWT techniques, the MRA furnishes a powerful tool to locate at different levels the main contribution of the coherent noise to be ltered, thus reducing the subjectivity always present in lter design. Since the decomposition coefcients are strictly linked to the location of the corresponding feature in the original data, efcient local lters can be realized by acting on specic coefcients. Even more sophisticated local lters than those implemented for our synthetic and real examples can be designed when necessary. As generally stated, our results conrm that the closer the wavelet is to the signal being analyzed, the better are the ltering results. Moreover, the more similar the support width is to the average size of the disturbance to be ltered out, the more effective is the removal. Computationally, DWT are generally as fast as Fourier and time-domain techniques, but allow a more precise lter design. The superiority of Radon-based ( - p ) methods for local directional ltering is clearly shown in the synthetic and the eld examples. However, these methods are much slower than the preceding ones and are rather sensitive to the proper selection of the frequency band, p sampling, p range, and muting zone sizes. The - p method should become highly attractive for GPR data processing as fast algorithms are being developed. The success of these techniques, in the case of a matrix extracted along a privileged path, is due to the increased coherence of the noise along a particular direction, which allows an easier identication and suppression. The procedure we applied to a single, clear air-diffraction hyperbola could be extended to several air diffractions, provided they are previously recognized and manually windowed one by one.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We express our gratitude to Maria Teresa Carrozzo for her valuable suggestions and critical remarks. Thanks go to G. Leucci, S. Margiotta, and S. Negri, and the technicians S. Corriero, G. Fortuzzi, and M. Luggeri, for the assistance in acquiring the eld data. Rita Bennett is kindly acknowledged for revising the English. M. D. Sacchi from the University of Alberta, Canada, is also acknowledged for making the Matlab codes on the Radon transform available. Journal reviews by Associate Editor Steven Arcone, Dengliang Gao, and an anonymous reviewer helped signicantly in improving the quality of the paper.
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