Controlled-source interferometric redatuming by crosscorrelation and multidimensional deconvolution in elastic media

Various researchers have shown that accurate redatuming of controlled seismic sources to downhole receiver locations can be achieved without requiring a velocity model. By placing receivers in a horizontal or deviated well and turning them into virtual sources, accurate images can be obtained even below a complex near-subsurface. Examples...

Seismic interferometry using multidimensional deconvolution and crosscorrelation for crosswell seismic reflection data without borehole sources

Crosswell reflection method is a high-resolution seismic imaging method that uses recordings between boreholes. The need for downhole sources is a restrictive factor in its application, for example, to time-lapse surveys. An alternative is to use surface sources in combination with seismic interferometry. Seismic interferometry (SI) could...

Tutorial on seismic interferometry: Part 1 — Basic principles and applications

Seismic interferometry involves the crosscorrelation of responses at different receivers to obtain the Green's function between these receivers. For the simple situation of an impulsive plane wave propagating along the x-axis, the crosscorrelation of the responses at two receivers along the x-axis gives the Green's function of the direct wave...

Tutorial on seismic interferometry: Part 2 — Underlying theory and new advances

In the 1990s, the method of time-reversed acoustics was developed. This method exploits the fact that the acoustic wave equation for a lossless medium is invariant for time reversal. When ultrasonic responses recorded by piezoelectric transducers are reversed in time and fed simultaneously as source signals to the transducers, they focus at the...

On seismic interferometry, the generalized optical theorem, and the scattering matrix of a point scatterer

We have analyzed the far-field approximation of the Green's function representation for seismic interferometry. By writing each of the Green's functions involved in the correlation process as a superposition of a direct wave and a scattered wave, the Green's function representation is rewritten as a superposition of four terms. When the...

Reflection images from ambient seismic noise

One application of seismic interferometry is to retrieve the impulse response (Green's function) from crosscorrelation of ambient seismic noise. Various researchers show results for retrieving the surface-wave part of the Green's function. However, reflection retrieval has proven more challenging. We crosscorrelate ambient seismic noise,...

Ray-based stochastic inversion of prestack seismic data for improved reservoir characterization

Trace inversion for reservoir parameters is affected by angle averaging of seismic data and wavelet distortion on the migration image. In an alternative approach to stochastic trace inversion, the data are inverted prestack before migration using 3D dynamic ray tracing. This choice makes it possible to interweave trace inversion with Kirchhoff...

Virtual reflector representation theorem (acoustic medium)

The virtual reflector method simulates new seismic signals by processing traces recorded by a plurality of sources and receivers. The approach is based on the crossconvolution of the recorded signals and makes it possible to obtain the Green’s function of virtual reflected signals as if in the position of the receivers (or sources) there were a...

Simulating migrated and inverted seismic data by filtering a geologic model

The simulation of migrated and inverted data is hampered by the high computational cost of generating 3D synthetic data, followed by processes of migration and inversion. For example, simulating the migrated seismic signature of subtle stratigraphic traps demands the expensive exercise of 3D forward modeling, followed by 3D migration of the...

General representations for wavefield modeling and inversion in geophysics

Acoustic, electromagnetic, elastodynamic, poroelastic, and electroseismic waves are all governed by a unified matrix-vector wave equation. The matrices in this equation obey the same symmetry properties for each of these wave phenomena. This implies that the wave vectors for each of these phenomena obey the same reciprocity theorems. By...

Seismic interferometry: Reconstructing the earth's reflection response

In 1968, Jon Claerbout showed that the reflection response of a 1D acoustic medium can be reconstructed by autocorrelating the transmission response. Since then, several authors have derived relationships for reconstructing Green's functions at the surface, using crosscorrelations of (noise) recordings that were taken at the surface and that...

Green's function representations for seismic interferometry

The term seismic interferometry refers to the principle of generating new seismic responses by crosscorrelating seismic observations at different receiver locations. The first version of this principle was derived by Claerbout (1968), who showed that the reflection response of a horizontally layered medium can be synthesized from the...

Spurious multiples in seismic interferometry of primaries

Seismic interferometry is a technique for estimating the Green's function that accounts for wave propagation between receivers by correlating the waves recorded at these receivers. We present a derivation of this principle based on the method of stationary phase. Although this derivation is intended to be educational, applicable to simple media...