Removal of scattered guided waves from seismic data

Geophysics ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 67 (4) ◽  
pp. 1240-1248 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabian E. Ernst ◽  
Gérard C. Herman ◽  
Auke Ditzel

Near‐surface scattered waves form a major source of coherent noise in seismic land data. Most current methods for removing these waves do not attenuate them adequately if they come from other than the inline direction. We present a wave‐theory‐based method for removing (scattered) guided waves by a prediction‐and‐removal algorithm. We assume that the near surface consists of a laterally varying medium, in which heterogeneities are embedded that act as scatterers. We first estimate the dispersive and laterally varying phase slowness field by applying a phase‐based tomography algorithm on the direct groundroll wave. Subsequently, the near‐surface heterogeneities are imaged using a least‐squares criterium. Finally, the scattered guided waves are modeled and subtracted adaptively from the seismic data. We have applied this method to seismic land data and found that near‐surface scattering effects are attenuated.

1998 ◽  
Vol 17 (6) ◽  
pp. 759-759 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabian Ernst ◽  
Gerard Herman ◽  
Bastian Blonk

Geophysics ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 71 (5) ◽  
pp. U67-U76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert J. Ferguson

The possibility of improving regularization/datuming of seismic data is investigated by treating wavefield extrapolation as an inversion problem. Weighted, damped least squares is then used to produce the regularized/datumed wavefield. Regularization/datuming is extremely costly because of computing the Hessian, so an efficient approximation is introduced. Approximation is achieved by computing a limited number of diagonals in the operators involved. Real and synthetic data examples demonstrate the utility of this approach. For synthetic data, regularization/datuming is demonstrated for large extrapolation distances using a highly irregular recording array. Without approximation, regularization/datuming returns a regularized wavefield with reduced operator artifacts when compared to a nonregularizing method such as generalized phase shift plus interpolation (PSPI). Approximate regularization/datuming returns a regularized wavefield for approximately two orders of magnitude less in cost; but it is dip limited, though in a controllable way, compared to the full method. The Foothills structural data set, a freely available data set from the Rocky Mountains of Canada, demonstrates application to real data. The data have highly irregular sampling along the shot coordinate, and they suffer from significant near-surface effects. Approximate regularization/datuming returns common receiver data that are superior in appearance compared to conventional datuming.


Geophysics ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 71 (2) ◽  
pp. V41-V49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gérard C. Herman ◽  
Colin Perkins

Land seismic data can be severely contaminated with coherent noise. We discuss a deterministic technique to predict and remove scattered coherent noise from land seismic data based on a mathematical model of near-surface wave propagation. We test the method on a unique data set recorded by Petroleum Development of Oman in the Qarn Alam area (with shots and receivers on the same grid), and we conclude that it effectively reduces scattered noise without smearing reflection energy.


Geophysics ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
pp. R15-R24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taeyoung Ha ◽  
Wookeen Chung ◽  
Changsoo Shin

Waveform inversion faces difficulties when applied to real seismic data, including the existence of many kinds of noise. The [Formula: see text]-norm is more robust to noise with outliers than the least-squares method. Nevertheless, the least-squares method is preferred as an objective function in many algorithms because the gradient of the [Formula: see text]-norm has a singularity when the residual becomes zero. We propose a complex-valued Huber function for frequency-domain waveform inversion that combines the [Formula: see text]-norm (for small residuals) with the [Formula: see text]-norm (for large residuals). We also derive a discretized formula for the gradient of the Huber function. Through numerical tests on simple synthetic models and Marmousi data, we find the Huber function is more robust to outliers and coherent noise. We apply our waveform-inversion algorithm to field data taken from the continental shelf under the East Sea in Korea. In this setting, we obtain a velocity model whose synthetic shot profiles are similar to the real seismic data.


Geophysics ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 81 (4) ◽  
pp. S195-S206 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mrinal Sinha ◽  
Gerard T. Schuster

Imaging seismic data with an erroneous migration velocity can lead to defocused migration images. To mitigate this problem, we first choose a reference reflector whose topography is well-known from the well logs, for example. Reflections from this reference layer are correlated with the traces associated with reflections from deeper interfaces to get crosscorrelograms. Interferometric least-squares migration (ILSM) is then used to get the migration image that maximizes the crosscorrelation between the observed and the predicted crosscorrelograms. Deeper reference reflectors are used to image deeper parts of the subsurface with a greater accuracy. Results on synthetic and field data show that defocusing caused by velocity errors is largely suppressed by ILSM. We have also determined that ILSM can be used for 4D surveys in which environmental conditions and acquisition parameters are significantly different from one survey to the next. The limitations of ILSM are that it requires prior knowledge of a reference reflector in the subsurface and the velocity model below the reference reflector should be accurate.


Geophysics ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-70
Author(s):  
Rodrigo S. Santos ◽  
Daniel E. Revelo ◽  
Reynam C. Pestana ◽  
Victor Koehne ◽  
Diego F. Barrera ◽  
...  

Seismic images produced by migration of seismic data related to complex geologies, suchas pre-salt environments, are often contaminated by artifacts due to the presence of multipleinternal reflections. These reflections are created when the seismic wave is reflected morethan once in a source-receiver path and can be interpreted as the main coherent noise inseismic data. Several schemes have been developed to predict and subtract internal multiplereflections from measured data, such as the Marchenko multiple elimination (MME) scheme,which eliminates the referred events without requiring a subsurface model or an adaptivesubtraction approach. The MME scheme is data-driven, can remove or attenuate mostof these internal multiples, and was originally based on the Neumann series solution ofMarchenko’s projected equations. However, the Neumann series approximate solution isconditioned to a convergence criterion. In this work, we propose to formulate the MMEas a least-squares problem (LSMME) in such a way that it can provide an alternative thatavoids a convergence condition as required in the Neumann series approach. To demonstratethe LSMME scheme performance, we apply it to 2D numerical examples and compare theresults with those obtained by the conventional MME scheme. Additionally, we evaluatethe successful application of our method through the generation of in-depth seismic images,by applying the reverse-time migration (RTM) algorithm on the original data set and tothose obtained through MME and LSMME schemes. From the RTM results, we show thatthe application of both schemes on seismic data allows the construction of seismic imageswithout artifacts related to internal multiple events.


2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (7) ◽  
pp. 542-549 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chengbo Li ◽  
Yu Zhang ◽  
Charles C. Mosher

Noise attenuation has been a long-standing problem in seismic data processing. It presents unique challenges on land due to a complex near surface coupled with unavoidable environmental noise sources. In many cases, weak signals are embedded in much stronger noise, which makes conventional methods less effective at extracting those signals. In addition, conventional methods may lack adaptability to various noise types and patterns. Machine learning has shown great promise in solving geophysical problems including seismic data processing and interpretation. Here, we propose a novel method that is applicable to attenuating both incoherent noise, such as environmental noise, and coherent noise, such as ground roll and scattered noise, under a unified learning-based framework. This framework takes advantage of conventional methods to build the initial models and then employs dictionary learning and sparse inversion to invert both signal and noise simultaneously. The proposed method augments conventional methods by leveraging learning to recover residual weak signals from strong noise. We have applied this hybrid learning-based method successfully to some of the most difficult data areas where conventional denoising methods underperformed. Synthetic and real data examples demonstrate the effectiveness of the method for various noise types.


Geophysics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 86 (1) ◽  
pp. V15-V22
Author(s):  
Felix Oghenekohwo ◽  
Mauricio D. Sacchi

Ground roll is coherent noise in land seismic data that contaminates seismic reflections. Therefore, it is essential to find efficient ways that remove this noise and still preserve reflections. To this end, we have developed a signal and noise separation framework that uses a hyperbolic moveout assumption on reflections, coupled with the synthesis of coherent ground roll. This framework yields a least-squares problem, which we solve using a sparsity-promoting program that gives coefficients capable of modeling the signal and noise. Subtraction of the predicted noise from the observed data produces data with amplitude-preserved reflections. We develop this technique on synthetic and field data contaminated by weak and strong ground roll noise. Compared to conventional Fourier filtering techniques, our method accurately removes the ground roll while preserving the amplitude of the signal.


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