Recent Developments in Local Wave Decomposition Methods for Understanding Seismic Data: Application to Seismic Interpretation

This article provides a general overview of local wave decomposition (LWD) methods including empirical mode decomposition (EMD), ensemble EMD, complete ensemble EMD with adaptive noise, synchrosqueezed transform and variational mode decomposition applied to seismic interpretation, covering the theoretical background and applications. We explain how LWD methods can be reviewed as a special and stronger case of the classical seismic time–frequency methods and place emphasis on the interest of using such LWD methods in seismic instantaneous frequency extraction, seismic attenuation estimation and seismic resolution enhancement.