Seismic $P$ Phase Picking Using a Kurtosis-Based Criterion in the Stationary Wavelet Domain

The seismic
P
phase first arrival identification is a fundamental problem in seismology. The accurate identification of the
P
-wave first arrival is not a trivial process, particularly when the seismograms present a very low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) or are contaminated with artificial transients that could produce false alarms. In this paper, a new approach based on higher order statistics and the stationary wavelet transform is presented. The
P
onset is obtained under a statistical criterion applied in the time-frequency domain. The results have been compared to those estimated by another
P
phase picking algorithm and
P
onsets picked by expert analysts. The comparison shows that our proposed method efficiently provides a good estimate of the
P
onset picks that are consistent with analyst picks, particularly in cases of very low SNR.