We introduce a technique that uses multicomponent seismic measurements to reconstruct the seismic wavefield at any desired crossline position between towed streamers. This method, called multichannel interpolation by matching pursuit (MIMAP), operates on pressure and crossline particle-motion measurements. It is based on the matching-pursuit technique and iteratively reconstructs the signal as a combination of optimal basis functions. Being a data-dependent technique, MIMAP can interpolate severely aliased data without assumptions about seismic events such as linearity or the model related to the seismic wavefield. MIMAP has the capability to perform well in the presence of irregular sampling and is robust when only a small number of samples are available. Using synthetic data examples, we show that the new method has the potential to interpolate signals that are sampled at realistic crossline streamer spacing and in the presence of noise.

Three-component measurements of particle motion would bring significant benefits to towed-marine seismic data if processed in conjunction with the pressure data. We show that particle velocity measurements can increase the effective Nyquist wavenumber by a factor of two or three, depending on how they are used. A true multicomponent streamer would enable accurate data reconstruction in the crossline direction with cable separations for which pressure-only data would be irrecoverably aliased. We also show that conventional workflows aimed at reducing these aliasing effects, such as moveout correction applied before interpolation, are compatible with multicomponent measurements. Some benefits of velocity measurements for deghosting data are well known. We outline how the new measurements might be used to address some long-standing deghosting challenges of particular interest. Specifically, we propose methods for recovering de-ghosted data between streamers and for 3D deghosting of seismic data at the streamer locations.

Computation of the 3D upgoing/downgoing separated wavefield at any desired position within a marine streamer spread is enabled by multicomponent streamers that can measure the crossline and vertical components of water-particle motion in addition to the pressure. We introduce the concept of simultaneous interpolation and deghosting and describe a new technique, generalized matching pursuit (GMP), to achieve this. This method is based on the matching-pursuit technique and iteratively reconstructs the signal as a combination of optimal basis functions. In the GMP method, the basis functions describing the unknown 3D upgoing wavefield are filtered by appropriate forward ghost operators before being matched to the multicomponent measurements. As a data-dependent method, GMP can operate on data samples that are highly aliased in the crossline direction without relying on assumptions about seismic events such as linearity. The technique is naturally suitable for data with only a small number of samples that may be irregularly spaced. We demonstrate the efficacy and robustness of the GMP method on several synthetic data sets of increasing complexity and in the presence of noise.