The invention discloses a remote reference magnetotelluric impedance calculation method based on correlation detection, and belongs to the field of geophysical exploration, for overcoming the
disadvantage of low accuracy of conventional magnetotelluric
tensor impedance calculation. The method comprises the following steps: electric fields and magnetic fields of a
base station and a reference
station are respectively acquired, processed and obtained,
electromagnetic field coherence degrees of the
base station and the reference
station are respectively calculated, when the two
electromagnetic field coherence degrees are greater than a certain threshold, data segments are reserved and marked, and data segments, free from non-relevant
noise interference, of the
base station and the reference
station are obtained; and then,
magnetic field component coherence degrees of the base station and the reference station with the marked data segments are calculated, when the
magnetic field component coherence degrees are greater than a certain threshold, data segments, free from
noise interference, of these magnetic fields are reserved, otherwise, the data segments are abandoned, participation in subsequent
tensor impedance
estimation is canceled,
tensor impedance
estimation is carried out by use of a conventional remote reference magnetotelluric mode based on a Robust method, and
apparent resistivity and impedance phase values are calculated by use of tensor estimated values. The method provided by the invention is applied to magnetotelluric exploration.