Adaptive sampling of AEM transients

•We propose an adaptive sampling scheme for EM transient.•It is based on detailed sampling of the EM transient decay at maxima of its curvature.•It improves the accuracy and precision of the estimated parameters of inverse models.

This paper focuses on the sampling of the electromagnetic transient as acquired by airborne time-domain electromagnetic (TDEM) systems.Typically, the sampling of the electromagnetic transient is done using a fixed number of gates whose width grows logarithmically (log-gating). The log-gating has two main benefits: improving the signal to noise (S/N) ratio at late times, when the electromagnetic signal has amplitudes equal or lower than the natural background noise, and ensuring a good resolution at the early times. However, as a result of fixed time gates, the conventional log-gating does not consider any geological variations in the surveyed area, nor the possibly varying characteristics of the measured signal.We show, using synthetic models, how a different, flexible sampling scheme can increase the resolution of resistivity models. We propose a new sampling method, which adapts the gating on the base of the slope variations in the electromagnetic (EM) transient.The use of such an alternative sampling scheme aims to get more accurate inverse models by extracting the geoelectrical information from the measured data in an optimal way.

Graphical AbstractFigure optionsDownload full-size imageDownload as PowerPoint slide