Power-line interference suppression of MT data based on frequency domain sparse decomposition

Power-line interference is one of the most common noises in magnetotelluric (MT) data. It usually causes distortion at the fundamental frequency and its odd harmonics, and may also affect other frequency bands. Although trap circuits are designed to suppress such noise in most of the modern acquisition devices, strong interferences are still found in MT data, and the power-line interference will fluctuate with the changing of load current. The fixed trap circuits often fail to deal with it. This paper proposes an alternative scheme for power-line interference removal based on frequency-domain sparse decomposition. Firstly, the fast Fourier transform of the acquired MT signal is performed. Subsequently, a redundant dictionary is designed to match with the power-line interference which is insensitive to the useful signal. Power-line interference is separated by using the dictionary and a signal reconstruction algorithm of compressive sensing called improved orthogonal matching pursuit (IOMP). Finally, the frequency domain data are switched back to the time domain by the inverse fast Fourier transform. Simulation experiments and real data examples from Lu-Zong ore district illustrate that this scheme can effectively suppress the power-line interference and significantly improve data quality. Compared with time domain sparse decomposition, this scheme takes less time consumption and acquires better results.