Method and apparatus for filtering data signals produced by exploration of earth formations

摘要

A filter is provided for removing certain noise-induced artifacts from a two-dimensional image of a bore-hole wall, this image being formed by signals from a two-dimensional array 12 of staggered electrodes 30 pulled along the bore-hole wall. The noise artifacts are due to a type of noise which varies as a function of depth of the array 12 but which is substantially the same at all electrodes 30 at any given time. The artifacts appear in the image in the form of a "footprint" of the electrode array, 62 as an unintended result of a depth-adjustment process 60 in which the original frames of samples of the signals at one electrodes 30 of the staggered array 12 all taken essentially at the same time, are later resampled to produce frames of samples each corresponding to the same depth in said bore-hole. The filter 68 makes use of the fact that the configuration of the artifact in the image is known, and that the true signal values do not change much between azimuthally adjacent electrodes 30. The preferred form of the filter 62 produces, and subtracts from each sample, a value of noise n which is a function of the depth of each electrode and which is such as to minimize the minimal discontinuity measure: where M is the measured value of the resampled signals for each (i,j), i is an integer representing electrode depths, j is an integer representing electrode azimuth position an the array, and g(j) is a function expressing the position of each electrode with respect to others on the array along the direction of motion of the array. In the preferred form, where w is an number expressing the width of a mathematical sliding window, where T⁻¹ is the inverse of a matrix T in a matrix equation expressing the solution of the set of linear simultaneous equations derived by setting equal to zero the partial derivatives with respect to n(k) of the minimal discontinuity measure I, where k = i-g(j), where k₁ and k₂ are the parameters of the matrix T⁻¹ and where y is a function of the measured sample values.