Deghosting by echo-deblending

Because of the strong sea surface reflectivity, a marine source generates both a direct wavefield and a ghost wavefield. This corresponds to a blended source array, the blending process being natural. Consequently, deghosting becomes deblending ('echo-deblending'). We discuss source deghosting by an iterative deblending algorithm that properly...

Using Ghost Reflections Rather than Removing Them

In marine acquisition both a direct wavefield and a ghost wavefield are produced as well as recorded. Hence, the seismic data can be considered to be a natural blend of four wavefields related to the real sources, ghost sources, real detectors and ghost detectors respectively. We consider deghosting to be deblending ('echo-deblending'), leading...

Toward the limits of deblending

If we bring sources closer together, they start to `sense' the nearness of each other and their physical behaviour will change. If the separation becomes smaller than half a wavelength, they start to act as one source with new properties (temporal bandwidth, directivity). This fusion process is very complex and nonlinear. To find out whether...

Blended acquisition with optimized dispersed source arrays

Until now, blended source arrays are configured with closely spaced source units, such as broadband airgun arrays (marine) and broadband vibrator arrays (land). In the latter case the source units are equal. We refer to this concept as homogeneous blending. In this paper the blending concept is extended to inhomogeneous blending, meaning that a...

Multiscattering illumination in blended acquisition

In traditional seismic surveys, the firing time between shots is such that the shot records do not interfere in time. However, in the concept of blended acquisition, the records do overlap, allowing denser source sampling and wider azimuths in an economic way. A denser shot sampling and wider azimuths make that each subsurface gridpoint is...

The concept of double blending: Combining incoherent shooting with incoherent sensing

Seismic surveys are designed so that the time interval between shots is sufficiently large to avoid temporal overlap between records. To economize on survey time, the current compromise is to keep the number of shots to an acceptable minimum. The result is a poorly sampled source domain. We propose to abandon the condition of nonoverlapping shot...

Acquisition geometry analysis in complex 3D media

Increasingly, we must deal with complex subsurface structures in seismic exploration, often resulting in poor illumination and, therefore, poor image quality. Consequently, it is desirable to take into consideration the effects of wave propagation in the subsurface structure when designing an acquisition geometry. We developed a new, model-based...