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MINI REVIEW article
Front. Earth Sci. , 04 March 2025
Sec. Solid Earth Geophysics
Volume 13 - 2025 | https://doi.org/10.3389/feart.2025.1505367
The frequency–Bessel transformation method has significantly advanced the extraction of multimodal surface waves in seismic research. However, the presence of crossed artifacts in frequency–Bessel spectrograms, particularly when stations are regularly distributed, presents a persistent challenge. Various methods have been proposed to mitigate these artifacts, yet their diverse formulations often lead to confusion about their practical application and interrelations. This study aims to demystify these ambiguities by analyzing the existing formulations within a unified framework. We uncover that the apparent discrepancies among these methods primarily originate from the differing conventions across various studies. Consequently, we establish explicit mathematical relationships among these existing formulations. Moreover, we demonstrate that the reliance on numerical Hilbert transform can be avoided by maintaining only the causal component of cross-correlation functions. This approach simplifies the artifact removal process, enhancing the practical utility of frequency–Bessel spectrograms in geophysical analysis.
Since the introduction of the frequency–Bessel transformation (FJ) method to extract multimodal surface wave dispersion curves by Wang et al. (2019) and Forbriger (2003), it is shortly recognized that crossed artifacts appear in the spectrograms when the stations are regularly distributed. Forbriger (2003) suggested that these artifacts could be reduced to use the Hankel function instead of the Bessel function in the integration process. Following this, subsequent studies by Xi et al. (2021), Luo et al. (2022), Zhou et al. (2023), and Yang et al. (2024) have explored diverse strategies to address this issue.
However, Yang et al. (2024) highlighted that there is a lack of consistency among these methods. For example, Forbriger (2003) and Xi et al. (2021) used
In this paper, we show how to extend Forbriger (2003)’s formulation from active to passive sources. We then analyze different approaches, focusing on the works by Forbriger (2003), Xi et al. (2021), Luo et al. (2022), Zhou et al. (2023), and Yang et al. (2024), using a consistent convention, and explore the relationships among these studies. We also make some clarifications on our previous study (Luo et al., 2022) and show how the usage of the numerical Hilbert transform can be avoided.
We use the Hilbert transform in the form (Hahn, 1996)
where the symbol P denotes the Cauchy principal value. This definition aligns with current literature (Hahn, 1996; Johnansson, 1999) and is implemented in the MATLAB software and the Python function scipy.signal.hilbert. However, it differs in sign from the definition of Erdelyi (1954) and the Python function scipy.fftpack.hilbert. According to Hu (1989), as cited by Zhou and Chen (2021) and Yang et al. (2024), the Kramers–Kronig relation for an analytic signal
In this notation,
Because we focus on the
In a related study, Forbriger (2003) proposed to use the following equation to mitigate the crossed artifacts:
Note that the original version of
Consequently,
Note that the extension of Forbriger (2003)’s work from active to passive sources intuitively leads to the adoption of
The FJ method has been extended to multicomponent CCFs (Hu et al., 2020). Correspondingly, the method of Forbriger (2003) to remove crossed artifacts has been adapted for multicomponent CCFs in another slightly different approach by Luo et al. (2022). At this point, we would like to clarify specific aspects of the study by Luo et al. (2022).
Notably, in the approach by Luo et al.’s (2022), there is an implicit assumption that solely the causal part of the CCFs, denoted as
Using the Fourier transform of the signum function,
From Equation 9, there are relations
Figure 1. Validation of Equation 9 by comparison of different methods to construct the imaginary part of
According to Equation 9, the numerical execution of the Hilbert transform can be circumvented in practical scenarios. This is because the Hilbert transform is inherently incorporated during the retention of only the causal portion of the CCFs. Practically, due to the potential asymmetry between the causal and acausal parts of the CCFs, we define the causal part as the average of the positive and negative segments of the CCFs. Additionally, in Luo et al. (2022), only the real part of the integration is used to construct the F-J spectrograms. Therefore, an equivalent expression of the equations used by Luo et al. (2022) would be (see Appendix in Luo et al. (2022)):
Instead of computing Equation 11 directly, Equation 10 indicates that the numerical Hilbert transform can be avoided in the integration if only the casual part of the CCFs
In the following section, we summarize other formulations for the improved FJ method with crossed artifacts removed.
Xi et al. (2021) proposed to use
where
Zhou et al. (2023) proposed to use
where
The methods of Xi et al. (2021) and Zhou et al. (2023) have been implemented by Li et al. (2021) for ZZ component CCFs and by Zhang et al. (2022) for multicomponent CCFs. It is important to note, however, that Li et al. (2021) and Zhang et al. (2022) utilized the Python function scipy. fftpack.hilbert in their implementation. This usage has introduced an apparent sign difference when compared to the theoretical analysis presented in this paper.
In a recent study, Yang et al. (2024) proposed the frequency–Hankel transform
Combining with the properties of the Hankel function,
and
According to Equations 15–19, there relation is given as
Denoting the corresponding imaginary part of the integrand in Equation 10 as
Note that Equation 19 has already been correctly provided by Yang et al. (2024) (Equation 21). However, the construction of
As elucidated in Equations 20, 21, the formulations proposed by Forbriger (2003), Xi et al. (2021), Luo et al. (2022), Zhou et al. (2023), and Yang et al. (2024) are actually correlated with each other. Notably, the constructions of
Figure 2. Frequency–Bessel spectrograms of synthetic data computed by the FJ method and three modified versions by Luo et al. (2022) and Xi et al. (2021). (A) FJ spectrogram by integrating with the Bessel function
To further demonstrate the correlations among these methods, we conducted a parallel test using field data from a USArray, as shown in Supplementary Figure S1. The data were previously used in Luo et al. (2022) (see their Figure 9). This test also confirms that both
In this study, we have conducted analysis of prior work addressing the elimination of crossed artifacts in the frequency–Bessel spectrograms, placing these studies within a unified framework. This approach has allowed us to uncover the underlying relationships between various methodologies proposed in the literature. We also have shown how to extend the formulation proposed by Forbriger (2003) from active to passive sources. Furthermore, we have proposed a refined approach that circumvents the need for the numerical Hilbert transform, as has been implicitly suggested in a previous study (Luo et al., 2022).
XJ: formal analysis, investigation, validation, visualization, and writing–original draft. SH: conceptualization, formal analysis, methodology, validation, and writing–original draft, Writing–review and editing. SL: Software, Writing–review and editing.
The author(s) declare that financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42488301, 41904047), Hubei Subsurface Multi-scale Imaging Key Laboratory (China University of Geosciences) (SMIL-2023-8), and the Research and Innovation Initiatives of WHPU.
The authors would like to thank the reviewers for their comments that helped them improve the manuscript.
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
The authors declare that no Generative AI was used in the creation of this manuscript.
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feart.2025.1505367/full#supplementary-material
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Keywords: multimodal surface wave, frequency–Bessel transformation, crossed artifact elimination, Hilbert transform, comparative analysis
Citation: Jiang X, Hu S and Luo S (2025) Comparative analysis of formulations for crossed artifact elimination in the frequency–Bessel spectrograms. Front. Earth Sci. 13:1505367. doi: 10.3389/feart.2025.1505367
Received: 02 October 2024; Accepted: 12 February 2025;
Published: 04 March 2025.
Edited by:
Elsa Leticia Flores Márquez, National Autonomous University of Mexico, MexicoReviewed by:
Kai Zhang, Huairou Lab, ChinaCopyright © 2025 Jiang, Hu and Luo. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Shaoqian Hu, aHVzaGFvcWlhbkBjdWcuZWR1LmNu
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
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