On the use of multicomponent streamer recordings for reconstruction of pressure wavefields in the crossline direction

Abstract

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.

Extracting the Green’s function from measurements of the energy flux

“…Measurement of the acoustic energy flux 21 can be carried out by using two nearby microphones, [22][23][24] or using devices that contain a microphone and an accelerometer. 25,26 The proposed method for Green's function extraction can be applied to such measurements. The theory holds for an arbitrary real density q(r) and compressibility j(r).…”

Multi-Measurement Wavefield Reconstruction for Broadband Imaging and Interpretation

“…A key driver has been extending the temporal bandwidth at both the low and high ends of the frequency spectrum; for example, to improve the overall resolution for interpretation, as well as enable additional information to be extracted from 3D attributes and seismic amplitude inversion.Techniques to attenuate the receiver-side ghost include variable-depth streamers (Soubaras and Lafet 2013) that exploit notch diversity caused by non-uniform tow depths at different offsets, as well as streamers that combine multimeasurements -typically total pressure (P) and particle velocity (V) -to infill the ghost notch (Tenghamn et al 2007;Robertsson et al 2008). This latter class of acquisition and processing techniques benefits from an increased low-frequency contribution from hydrophone data enabled by a consistent, deep tow across all offsets.…”

“…Techniques to attenuate the receiver-side ghost include variable-depth streamers (Soubaras and Lafet 2013) that exploit notch diversity caused by non-uniform tow depths at different offsets, as well as streamers that combine multimeasurements -typically total pressure (P) and particle velocity (V) -to infill the ghost notch (Tenghamn et al 2007;Robertsson et al 2008). This latter class of acquisition and processing techniques benefits from an increased low-frequency contribution from hydrophone data enabled by a consistent, deep tow across all offsets.…”

A low-frequency deghosting method: Analysis and numerical tests

“…Klü-ver and Day (2011) propose a method to decompose 3D dual-sensor streamer data into upgoing/downgoing wavefield using crossline slowness estimates. Robertsson et al (2008) discuss how multicomponent (three wavefield components) measurements could be used for 3D deghosting and for reconstructing/interpolating deghosted data between streamers. Özbek et al (2010) show how the generalized matching pursuit algorithm could be used on such multicomponent data to reconstruct upgoing and downgoing pressure wavefields on a densely sampled grid.…”