Abstract: Time-frequency analysis is a successfully used tool for analyzing the local features of seismic data. However, it suffers from several inevitable limitations, such as the restricted time-frequency resolution, the difficulty in selecting parameters, and the low computational efficiency. Inspired by deep learning, we suggest a deep learning-based workflow for seismic time-frequency analysis. The sparse S transform network (SSTNet) is first built to map the relationship between synthetic traces and sparse S transform spectra, which can be easily pre-trained by using synthetic traces and training labels. Next, we introduce knowledge distillation (KD) based transfer learning to re-train SSTNet by using a field data set without training labels, which is named the sparse S transform network with knowledge distillation (KD-SSTNet). In this way, we can effectively calculate the sparse time-frequency spectra of field data and avoid the use of field training labels. To test the availability of the suggested KD-SSTNet, we apply it to field data to estimate seismic attenuation for reservoir characterization and make detailed comparisons with the traditional time-frequency analysis methods.