COMBINED SWEEP SIGNALS FOR CORRELATION NOISE SUPPRESSION*

Comparison of both synthetic and field data shows that considerable suppression of correlation noise can be achieved with the Combisweep technique and with the Encoded Sweep Technique. In the first technique, the spectrum is shaped by superposition of linear sweeps with different frequency range; in the second technique, short sweeps of different polarity are combined to form the “alphabet” of a code.     

A procedure to reduce side lobes of reflection wavelets: A contribution to low frequency information

Side lobes of the wavelets arise from the lack of low frequency content in a reflection wavelet. They tend to increase the time span of an individual reflection event and interfere with the other primary reflections or side lobes. Furthermore, their trace-by-trace consistency may produce pseudo-reflections and may cause misinterpretations of the side lobes as weak reflections.A procedure in order to improve the low frequency content of the seismic traces by suppressing the side lobe amplitudes based on the complex trace envelope is proposed. Using the average energies of the seismic trace and its envelope, the polarity table of the trace is obtained and used to correct the phase of the envelope. The resultant trace is termed “side lobe reduced (SLR) trace”. The method can be applied to the stack or migrated seismic data by a trace-by-trace basis. The only required parameter of the method is the moving average operator length which is used to calculate average energies of the input traces. In general, shorter operator lengths yield better results when the dominant frequency of the input increases.Results from synthetics and real seismic data sets show that the procedure improves the low frequency components of the input trace and side lobes in the output SLR trace are significantly suppressed. The method may be considered as a seismic amplitude attribute, which aids the interpreter to obtain the true seismic signature of the geological formations by removing the side lobes of the wavelet and restoring the low frequency components if the lower frequencies of deeper reflections are of primary concern.     

Orthogonal vibroseis sweeps

Vibroseis is a method that imparts coded seismic energy into the ground. The energy is recorded with geophones and then processed using the known (coded) input signal. The resulting time‐domain representation of vibroseis data is an impulsive wavetrain with wavelet properties consistent with the coded input signal convolved with the earth's reflectivity series. Historically, vibratory seismic surveys collect data from one source location at a time, summing one or more sources at each location. We present a method of designing orthogonal sweeps using the concept of combisweeps. The orthogonal sweeps allow simultaneous recording and later separation of two or more unique source locations. Orthogonality of sweeps permits separation of the data into unique source‐location field records by a conventional correlation procedure. The separation power of the orthogonal sweeps is demonstrated by a comparison between separated data and data acquired with one vibrator. Separation noise was at a negligible level for our demonstration data sets when two vibrators were located 50 m to 200 m apart. Coincident generation and recording of two vibroseis sweeps at different locations would allow almost double the amount of data to be recorded for a given occupation time and requires only half the storage medium.     

NEW POSSIBILITIES FOR REFLECTION SEISMICS BY UNDERSHOOTING BODIES WITH COMPLICATED TECTONICS *

In modern oil exploration layers of prospective interest with rather simple structural features are often overlain by very complicated bodies as e.g. saltdomes or other kinds of diapirs, olistostromes, or front zones of overthrusted blankets. In all these cases normal reflection seismic investigations, where downgoing and upgoing rays are rather close to each other, mostly fail, either because no reflections from underneath the complicated bodies are obtained, or because a reliable migrated depth presentation becomes practically impossible due to the inhomogeneity of the overlying bodies. The undershooting technique avoids these difficulties by using ray paths which do not traverse the complicated bodies e.g. by shooting on one side of a saltdome and recording on the other side. On account of the large shot-geophone distances in this method special considerations and computer processes were developed concerning moveout corrections for common depth point stacking and migrated depth presentation. In many cases the location of the disturbing complicated bodies is known in advance. The shooting and recording program can then be adjusted to this knowledge and thereby kept to a minimum. If the location of the complicated bodies is unknown a more extended seismic program has to be carried out encompassing a great variety of shot-geophone distances. But in this case the approximate location of the complicated bodies can be deduced from the survey too. Results are presented in order to give an idea of the efficiency of the new seismic tool.     

CONTINUOUS ANALYSIS OF THE VELOCITY FUNCTION AND OF THE MOVE OUT CORRECTIONS*

Several papers presented at the last SEG Convention in Houston by Schneider, Backus et al have shown how important and fruitful it was to obtain a continuous knowledge of the velocity functions and they have solved their problem by a Dynamic Correlation Analysis. Our purpose is to introduce here a method based on the best summation of a set of traces instead of the best correlation. Practically, this approach has several advantages: 1) Two traces only can be correlated at each step whereas the summation can bear on any number of them; 2) Optimizing the summation is actually what we are looking for since, at the long end, the success of the improvement is evaluated from the compositing of several traces either weighted or not. On the other hand, an advantage of correlation is the possibility of adding correlations obtained at several places in a same neighbourhood in order to improve the results. With the summation method this is feasible only when dips are inexistent: we shall see that the difficulty due to the dip effect can be turned around. The basic principle of the method can be summed up as follows: traces relating to a same reflection point are considered; several composites are made, each after applying different move out corrections ranging widely around an estimated adequate velocity function. At each time coordinate, the best adapted velocity function, i.e. the one that yields the best phase relation between reflected events, corresponds to the composite trace the average amplitude of which is the largest. This way, the velocity function corresponding to primary reflections as well as those corresponding to multiple reflections can be established accurately. Some examples are shown.     

REDUCTION OF HARMONIC DISTORTION IN VIBRATORY SOURCE RECORDS*

Due to non-linear effects, the swept frequency signals (sweeps) transmitted into the subsurface by vibrators are contaminated by harmonics. Upon correlation of the recorded seismograms, these harmonics lead to noise trains which are particularly disturbing in the case of down-sweeps. The method described in this paper—which can be regarded as a generalization of Sorkin's approach to the suppression of even order harmonics—allows elimination, from the final vibratory source seismogram, of harmonics of the sweep up to any desired order. It requires that not one single signal but rather a series of M signals is employed where each signal has an initial phase differing from that of the previous one of the series by the phase angle 2πM. Prior to stacking, the seismograms generated with the different signals have to be brought into the form they would have if they had been generated with the same signal. The method seems also to be capable of reducing the correlation noise if sign-bit recording techniques are used.     

FULL WAVE EQUATION DOWNWARD CONTINUATION OF SEISMIC REFLECTION DATA*

A new method for suppressing multiple reflections in seismograms is developed. It is based on a downward continuation procedure which uses the full acoustic wave equation (hyperbolic form) as a downward continuation operator. We demonstrate that the downward continuation of the recorded wave field maps a reflectivity function without multiply reflected events. The method is applied successfully to individual traces of plane-wave decomposed (slant-stacked) synthetic and field data.     

HORIZONTAL STACKING AND MULTICHANNEL FILTERING APPLIED TO COMMON DEPTH POINT SEISMIC DATA*

The common depth point method of shooting in oil exploration provides a series of seismic traces which yield information about the substrata layers at one location. After normal moveout and static corrections have been applied, the traces are combined by horizontal stacking, or linear multichannel filtering, into a single record in which the primary reflections have been enhanced relative to the multiple reflections and random noise. The criterion used in optimum horizontal stacking is to maximize the signal to noise power ratio, where signal refers to the primary reflection sequence and noise includes the multiple reflections. It is shown when this criterion is equivalent to minimizing the mean square difference between the desired signal (primary reflection sequence) and the weighted horizontally stacked traces. If the seismic traces are combined by multichannel linear filtering, the primary reflection sequence will have undergone some phase and frequency distortion on the resulting record. The signal to noise power ratio then becomes less meaningful a criterion for designing the optimum linear multichannel filter, and the mean square criterion is adopted. In general, however, since more a priori information about the seismic traces is required to design the optimum linear multichannel filter than required for the optimum set of weights of the horizontal stacking process, the former will be an improvement over the latter. It becomes evident that optimum horizontal stacking is a restricted form of linear multichannel filtering.     

Seismic interferometry,intrinsic losses and Q‐estimation*

Seismic interferometry is the process of generating new seismic traces from the cross‐correlation, convolution or deconvolution of existing traces. One of the starting assumptions for deriving the representations for seismic interferometry by cross‐correlation is that there is no intrinsic loss in the medium where the recordings are performed. In practice, this condition is not always met. Here, we investigate the effect of intrinsic losses in the medium on the results retrieved from seismic interferometry by cross‐correlation. First, we show results from a laboratory experiment in a homogeneous sand chamber with strong losses. Then, using numerical modelling results, we show that in the case of a lossy medium ghost reflections will appear in the cross‐correlation result when internal multiple scattering occurs. We also show that if a loss compensation is applied to the traces to be correlated, these ghosts in the retrieved result can be weakened, can disappear, or can reverse their polarity. This compensation process can be used to estimate the quality factor in the medium.     

HORIZONTAL STACKING AND MULTICHANNEL FILTERING APPLIED TO COMMON DEPTH POINT SEISMIC DATA*

The common depth point method of shooting in oil exploration provides a series of seismic traces which yield information about the substrata layers at one location. After normal moveout and static corrections have been applied, the traces are combined by horizontal stacking, or linear multichannel filtering, into a single record in which the primary reflections have been enhanced relative to the multiple reflections and random noise. The criterion used in optimum horizontal stacking is to maximize the signal to noise power ratio, where signal refers to the primary reflection sequence and noise includes the multiple reflections. It is shown when this criterion is equivalent to minimizing the mean square difference between the desired signal (primary reflection sequence) and the weighted horizontally stacked traces. If the seismic traces are combined by multichannel linear filtering, the primary reflection sequence will have undergone some phase and frequency distortion on the resulting record. The signal to noise power ratio then becomes less meaningful a criterion for designing the optimum linear multichannel filter, and the mean square criterion is adopted. In general, however, since more a priori information about the seismic traces is required to design the optimum linear multichannel filter than required for the optimum set of weights of the horizontal stacking process, the former will be an improvement over the latter. It becomes evident that optimum horizontal stacking is a restricted form of linear multichannel filtering.     

Effective elimination of subharmonic ghost events from vibroseis data

Harmonic or subharmonic noise is often present in vibroseis data as reverberation‐like, laterally coherent bands occurring parallel to and before or after, the main events. Such periodic noise is typically generated during the standard correlation process when the actual source signal travelling through the subsurface is, for whatever reason, different from the desired source signal, i.e., the pilot‐sweep controlling the baseplate and used for correlation. A typical cause can be that harmonic or subharmonic frequency partials are generated in addition to the vibroseis sweep's desired fundamental frequencies. These harmonics produce strong ‘ghost events’ during correlation of the geophone trace with the pilot‐sweep, originating from additional correlations between the fundamental and harmonic frequencies. Especially subharmonic ‘ghosts’ will overlap with ‘good’ fundamental signals, since for typically used up‐sweeps they are folded to later traveltimes, where the signal/noise‐ratio is already lower, thus aggravating or preventing a reliable interpretation of possible later reflections. Here, a method is introduced to remove these unwanted noise trains (with only negligible impact on the fundamental signal) by transforming the seismogram traces into a so‐called ‘(sub)harmonic domain’. In this domain, the respective harmonic noise portions are focused and separated from the fundamental signals, enabling easier detection and appropriate suppression. After back‐transformation to the x‐T domain, the records are free from the corresponding harmonic contamination and can then be processed as usual. The method operates in a data‐driven fashion, i.e., the traces are not uniformly processed but are processed depending upon their actual (sub)harmonic content. The decontamination procedure can be applied universally, i.e., to uncorrelated/correlated and/or vertically unstacked/stacked data either in a manual, semiautomated or fully automated manner. The method works perfectly for synthetic vibroseis traces with or without harmonic/subharmonic portions. The application to real, crustal‐scale vibroseis records that were acquired in 2006 in the Dead Sea region, Israel and that were severely contaminated by subharmonic ground‐roll ghosts covering reflectivity from the basement to the Moho, shows the robustness and success of the presented method.     

Vibroseis productivity: shake and go

We use both model and field data to compare three methods for increasing vibroseis productivity and decreasing acquisition costs. The first method, HFVS (high-fidelity vibratory seismic), allows us to separate the responses from individual vibrators when multiple vibrators are operating simultaneously. The data quality of the separated records is superior to that of conventional correlated data because they are processed with measured ground-force signals, but the number of sweeps must be greater than or equal to the number of vibrators. The second method, cascaded sweep, eliminates the listening time between multiple sweeps and partially mitigates harmonic noise observed at later times on near-offset traces. Finally, a combined method, continuous-HFVS (C-HFVS), allows source separation with a single, long, segmented sweep. Separation is as good as with HFVS and interference noise is limited to times near the end of a sweep-segment length. All three methods produce acceptable seismic images for post-stack and prestack amplitude interpretation.
The choice of which option to use depends upon the area being investigated. HFVS has numerous benefits, especially when fine sampling is required to mitigate static problems and elevation changes. Due to the ability to separate individual responses, fine sampling can be achieved without sacrificing productivity. For deeper targets, cascaded sweep can be more efficient but data quality suffers from harmonic noise. C-HFVS, which combines features of HFVS and cascaded sweep, has the potential to result in the highest productivity, without sacrificing either fine sampling or data quality.     

Scattered reflections and multiple traces in the range of 7–10 MHz on ionograms of the interkosmos-19 satellite

The scattered reflections and multiple traces regularly recorded on the topside sounding ionograms of the Interkosmos-19 satellite in the frequency range of 7–10 MHz are considered. The reflected radio signals in this frequency range appear both above and below the critical frequency of the regular layer F2. They are observed at all altitudes of the topside ionosphere from hmF2 to a satellite altitude of 1000 km. It is shown that these phenomena regularly appear at high latitudes (≥60° ILAT) and, less often, in the equatorial region. The scattered reflections indicate the presence of small-scale irregularities, and continuous traces are a consequence of total internal reflection from large-scale irregularities. Small-scale irregularities evidently form within a large-scale irregularity. Ray tracing shows that the size of large-scale irregularities is hundreds of kilometers in height and tens of kilometers in latitude. The appearance of scattered reflections and multiple traces at high latitudes is nearly independent of local time; in the equatorial region, they appear only in the interval of 20–08 LT. All of this agrees well with other observations of irregularities in the ionospheric plasma of different scales.     

Filtering vibroseis data in the precorrelation domain

Vibroseis data recorded at short source–receiver offsets can be swamped by direct waves from the source. The signal-to-noise ratio, where primary reflections are the signal and correlation side lobes are the noise, decreases with time and late reflection events are overwhelmed. This leads to low seismic resolution on the vibroseis correlogram. A new precorrelation filtering approach is proposed to suppress correlation noise. It is the ‘squeeze-filter-unsqueeze’ (SFU) process, a combination of ‘squeeze’ and ‘unsqueeze’ (S and U) transformations, together with the application of either an optimum least-squares filter or a linear recursive notch filter. SFU processing provides excellent direct wave removal if the onset time of the direct wave is known precisely, but when the correlation recognition method used to search for the first arrival fails, the SFU filtering will also fail. If the tapers of the source sweeps are badly distorted, a harmonic distortion will be introduced into the SFU-filtered trace. SFU appears to be more suitable for low-noise vibroseis data, and more effective when we know the sweep tapers exactly. SFU requires uncorrelated data, and is thus cpu intensive, but since it is automatic, it is not labour intensive. With non-linear sweeps, there are two approaches to the S,U transformations in SFU. The first requires the non-linear analytical sweep formula, and the second is to search and pick the zero nodes on the recorded pilot trace and then carry out the S,U transformations directly without requiring the algorithm or formula by which the sweep was generated. The latter method is also valid for vibroseis data with a linear sweep. SFU may be applied to the removal of any undesired signal, as long as the exact onset time of the unwanted signal in the precorrelation domain is known or determinable.     

Seismic interferometry by tangent‐phase correction

We present a modified interferometry method based on local tangent‐phase analysis, which corrects the cross‐correlated data before summation. The approach makes it possible to synthesize virtual signals usually vanishing in the conventional seismic interferometry summation. For a given pair of receivers and a set of different source positions, a plurality of virtual traces is obtained at new stationary projected points located along the signal wavefronts passing through the real reference receiver. The position of the projected points is estimated by minimizing travel times using wavefront constraint and correlation‐signal tangent information. The method uses mixed processing, which is partially based on velocity‐model knowledge and on data‐based blind interferometry. The approach can be used for selected events, including reflections with different stationary conditions and projected points with respect to those of the direct arrivals, to extend the interferometry representation in seismic exploration data where conventional illumination coverage is not sufficient to obtain the stationary‐phase condition. We discuss possible applications in crosswell geometry with a velocity anomaly and a time lapse.     

COMPUTER TECHNIQUES FOR THE ZONING AND CORRELATION OF WELL-LOGS*

This paper reviews computer techniques used in the automatic zoning and correlation of well-logs. Prior to correlating, well-logs are to be segmented–or ‘zoned’–so as to delineate sections that have similar properties. Techniques discussed include statistical methods such as variance tests and Student's t-test, linguistic analysis, the use of Walsh functions and spectral analysis. Well-log correlation, which may be between traces from different wells or between traces from the same hole (as in dip logs), is used in basin studies and the determination of structural dip. A variety of methods are reviewed including conventional time and frequency correlation, sequence slotting, pattern recognition and frequency analysis. Future directions for investigation are proposed.     

Wavelet correlation filter for wide-angle seismic data

A new filtering technique for single‐fold wide‐angle reflection/refraction seismic data is presented. The technique is based on the wavelet decomposition of a set of adjacent traces followed by coherence analysis. The filtering procedure consists of three steps. In the first, a wavelet decomposition of traces into different detail levels is performed. In the second, the coherence attributes for each level are evaluated by calculating cross‐correlation functions of detail portions contained in a space–time moving window. Finally, the filtered traces are obtained as a weighted reconstruction of the trace details. Each weight is obtained from the coherence‐attributes distribution estimated in a proper interval. A sequence of tests is then conducted in order to select possible optimum or unsuitable wavelet bases. The efficiency of the filter proposed was assessed by calculating some properly designed parameters in order to compare it with other standard de‐noising techniques. The proposed method produced a clear signal enhancement in high‐density wide‐angle seismic data, thus proving that it is a useful processing tool for a reliable correlation of seismic phases.     

DATA ACQUISITION AND PROCESSING OF CONVERTED pS-WAVES*

The earth's surface can be an effective means of generating converted pS-waves. Due to their nearly symmetrical ray path, conventional processing techniques can be used. As the wave is generated by reflection at the surface or at the base of surface layers one can expect a general filtering effect in the data for individual ray paths of a single shot gather. To balance the spectra of the traces a multiple-trace filter was used. This filter can be fully determined in the time domain using the prediction-error operators of the individual traces. The preferred mean spectrum to colour the traces was the geometric mean. As the process of spectral balancing requires a minimum-delay wavelet, the recording instrument was replaced by its corresponding minimum-phase equivalent. This process can also be carried out effectively in the time domain. Results of the application of minimum-delay transform and spectral balancing are discussed for single shot gathers and for the general improvement of the final stack.     

柴达木东盆地的深层地震反射波和地壳构造

一、引言 地壳和上地幔顶部的构造,对研究地震发生、发展及演变过程的深部背景,以及划分地震活动块体和探讨地震成因有着重要的意义。然而地壳构造的研究,又是与地震学的发展密切相关。1909年,莫霍洛维奇在近震研究中,首先发现了地壳与上地幔分界面的首波,其覆盖层的平均速度 =6.3公里/秒,界面速度V_d=8.0公里/秒（简称M界面）。后于1923年,康拉德（conrad）也是根据天然地震资料鉴别出一个平均速度为=5.4     

Phase identification and attribute analysis of broadband seismograms at far-regional distances

A trained analyst can frequently provide a rapid assessment of a seismic record and provide identification for many seismic phases. For digital data a challenge is to find methods (or combinations of methods) which can provide equivalent levels of phase identification and attribute analysis. Until now, there have been few discussions on phase attribute analysis for broadband records, even though the character of the major phases has been recognised several decades ago. We introduce a combination of four simple methods into the analysis of broadband seismograms so as to provide a means of improving phase recognition and the full use of broadband information for far-regional distances where the seismograms are particularly complex (because of the influence of the upper mantle discontinuities). For arrival detection we can employ the energy ratios of the short term behaviour to the long-term trend, using the vertical component and horizontal components of unrotated seismic records. We also use auto-regressive analysis to endeavour to separate broadband records into three parts: the seismic signal, microseismic noise and white noise. The higher order auto- and cross-correlation coefficient (representing the similarity of waveform) can be used to identify the presence of seismic phases, by avoiding the influence of the relatively low order correlation of microseismic noise. For each broadband 3-component record a set of complex traces are constructed and then a variety of definitions of instantaneous phase and frequency can be exploited to separate the behaviour of signal and noise. The complex traces can also be used for polarisation analysis. The changes in the character of the eigenvectors are particularly helpful for recognising the phases of broadband records in the far-regional range. The individual methods are quite powerful but when used in combination can provide a very effective means of phase characterisation.