P-Wave first arrival picking in microseismic signals using a relaxed continuous minima strategy
CHEN Yifan1, WANG Weifeng1, 2, 3*, DONG Mengyang2, LIU Yixiang2, MA Yansong2, LIU Bin2
(1. School of Electrical and Control Engineering, Xi'an University of Science and Technology, Xi'an, Shaanxi 710054, China;
2. School of Safety Science and Engineering, Xi'an University of Science and Technology, Xi'an, Shaanxi 710054, China;
3. Key Laboratory of Intelligent Safety Technology and Equipment for Coal Mines, Ministry of Emergency Management, Xi'an, Shaanxi 710054, China)
Abstract：The accurate identification of P-wave arrivals in microseismic signals is a critical step for source localization and disaster early warning. In the complex environment of underground coal mines, strong background noise and pulse interference significantly affect the precision of arrival time identification. To address this challenge, a P-wave picking method based on the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) was proposed, which achieves high-precision identification in the presence of both white noise and pulse interference. First, a composite feature curve (C-AIC) was constructed by incorporating the first- and second-order differences of the signal into the variance calculation of the AIC curve, followed by a weighted fusion of these components. Second, to mitigate mispicking caused by global minimum criteria amidst pulse disturbances, a local-minimum-based detection strategy was developed: consecutive local minima with intervals smaller than a threshold β are grouped into segments, and the first point of the segment containing the largest number of minima is selected as the P-wave arrival. Tests conducted on 80 real microseismic signals demonstrate that the proposed method achieves high-precision P-wave picking under both white noise and pulse interference, with 66 signals (82.5%) exhibiting errors below 5 ms and a mean absolute error of only 2.2 ms. This significantly outperforms VAR-AIC (336.7 ms) and PAI-K (396 ms). Compared to other methods, AIC maintains precision under white noise but is prone to mispicking under pulse interference. In contrast, the proposed method demonstrates enhanced stability and robustness across various noise conditions, indicating substantial practical value for microseismic monitoring and hazard prevention.
陈怡帆1，王伟峰1，2，3*，董梦洋2，刘亦香2，马岩松2，刘 斌2. 基于宽松连续极小值的煤矿井下微震信号P波初至拾取方法[J]. 岩石力学与工程学报, 2026, 45(S1): 226-241.
CHEN Yifan1, WANG Weifeng1, 2, 3*, DONG Mengyang2, LIU Yixiang2, MA Yansong2, LIU Bin2. P-Wave first arrival picking in microseismic signals using a relaxed continuous minima strategy. , 2026, 45(S1): 226-241.
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2026, Vol. 45 
