Processing of High-Resolution Marine Seismic Data - Suppression of The Signature of The Receiving-Emitting System

Abstract

Summary At present, when carrying out offshore seismic operations using the HR/VHR/UHR (high-resolution, very-high-resolution and ultra-high-resolution) techniques, various types of sources of elastic waves are used, such as electric sparker sources (“sparkers”), electrodynamic sources (“boomers”) and small volume air guns. The signature of these sources differs significantly from each other and depends on the parameters of their operation in each case. In addition, the streamer towing depth affects the resulting waveform. Typically, such a signature includes a primary source pulse, ghost waves reflected from the water-air surface from the source and from the receiver, secondary bubble pulsations, and possibly other oscillations associated with the characteristics of the source. The resulting complex signature, if it cannot be suppressed by processing, significantly reduces the resolution of the seismic images. Even now, during g high-resolution seismic data processing, it is usually not possible to completely effectively suppress the signature, which leads to the loss of the potential advantages of high-resolution seismic surveys and a decrease the quality of the resulting images. In this article we will go through some examples of data acquired with different types of sources and discuss approaches to suppressing noise waves contained in the resulting signature.