Experiences of a multidisciplinary course on geo-signal processing from a DSP perspective offered in electrical engineering at King Fahd University of petroleum and minerals

The purpose of this paper is to share the experience gained in, and the efforts made toward, introducing and implementing a new course in the challenging and important area of geophysical signal processing at the Electrical Engineering (EE) Department, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM), Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. The new course, titled Geo-Signal Processing, was offered both at the graduate level and as a special topics course to undergraduates. The course was developed in collaboration with the Earth Sciences Department at KFUPM. This paper contributes new information because it stresses the multidisciplinary aspects of digital signal processing (DSP) technologies when applied to estimating the Earth's layered structure on the basis of seismic data. Unlike many Earth sciences seismic data processing courses, this Geo-Signal Processing course also emphasizes that the perspective taken by those working in DSP is different from that taken by geophysicists. The course presents DSP with particular emphasis on seismic data signals and the artifacts accompanying them while covering the principles and algorithms needed for processing seismic signals in both deterministic and statistical fashion. Topics include, but are not limited to, basic seismic theory, acquisition of seismic data, analysis of seismic signals and noise, deterministic filtering of seismic data, and statistical processing of seismic data.