The estimation of shear-wave statics using in situ measurements in marine near-surface sediments

Shear‐wave statics in marine seismic exploration data are routinely too large to be estimated using conventional techniques. Near‐surface unconsolidated sediments are often characterized by low values of V_s and steep velocity gradients. Minor variations in sediment properties at these depths correspond to variations in the shear‐wave velocity and will produce significant static shifts. It is suggested that a significant proportion of the shear‐wave statics solution can be estimated by performing a separate high‐resolution survey to target near‐surface unconsolidated sediments. Love‐wave, shear‐wave refraction and geotechnical measurements were individually used to form high‐resolution near‐surface shear‐wave velocity models to estimate the shear‐wave statics for a designated survey line. Comparisons with predicted statics revealed that shear‐wave statics could not be estimated using a velocity model predicted by substituting geotechnical measurements into empirical relationships. Empirical relationships represent a vast simplification of the factors that control V_s and are therefore not sufficiently sensitive to estimate shear‐wave statics. Refraction measurements are potentially sensitive to short‐wavelength variations in sediment properties when combined with accurate navigational data. Statics estimated from Love‐wave data are less sensitive, and sometimes smoothed in appearance, since interpreted velocity values represent an average both laterally and vertically over the receiver array and the frequency–depth sensitivity range, respectively. For the survey site, statics estimated from near‐surface irregularities using shear‐wave refraction measurements represent almost half the total statics solution. More often, this proportion will be greater when bedrock relief is less.     

A five component land seismic sensor for measuring lateral gradients of the wavefield

We built a five-component (5C) land seismic sensor that measures both the three-component (3C) particle acceleration and two vertical gradients of the horizontal wavefield through a pair of 3C microelectromechanical accelerometers. The sensor is a small cylindrical device planted vertically just below the earth's surface. We show that seismic acquisition and processing 5C sensor data has the potential to replace conventional seismic acquisition with analogue geophone groups by single 5C sensors placed at the same station interval when combined with a suitable aliased ground roll attenuation algorithm. The 5C sensor, therefore, allows for sparser, more efficient, data acquisition. The accuracy of the 5C sensor wavefield gradients depends on the 3C accelerometers, their sensitivity, self-noise and their separation. These sensor component specifications are derived from various modelling studies. The design principles of the 5C sensor are validated using test data from purpose-built prototypes. The final prototype was constructed with a pair of 3C accelerometers separated by 20 cm and with a self-noise of 35 ng Hz^−1/2. Results from a two-dimensional seismic line show that the seismic image of 5C sensor data with ground roll attenuated using 5C sensor gradient data was comparable to simulated analogue group data as is the standard in the industry. This field example shows that up to three times aliased ground roll was attenuated. The 5C sensor also allows for correcting vertical component accelerometer data for sensor tilt. It is shown that a vertical component sensor that is misaligned with the vertical direction by 10° introduces an error in the seismic data of around –20 dB with respect to the seismic signal, which can be fully corrected. Advances in sensor specifications and processing algorithms are expected to lead to even more effective ground roll attenuation, enabling a reduction in the receiver density resulting in a smaller number of sensors that must be deployed and, therefore, improving the operational efficiency while maintaining image quality.     

Design,modelling and imaging of marine seismic swarm surveys

Autonomous marine vehicles instrumented with seismic sensors allow for new efficient seismic survey designs. One such design is the swarm survey, where a group, or swarm, of slow moving autonomous marine vehicles record seismic data from shots fired by a source vessel sailing around circles within the swarm. The size of the swarm is dictated by the maximum offset requirement of the survey, and it can be shaped to acquire wide‐ and full‐azimuth data. The swarm survey design equation describes the relationship between the source and receiver positions of the survey and the subsurface coverage or fold. It is used to adapt the swarm to the seismic survey requirements and to calculate survey duration time estimates as function of available equipment. It is shown that a survey conducted by a slowly moving swarm requires six times fewer shots than an equivalent seabed node survey conducted over 85.5 km². Swarm surveys can also be adapted to efficiently conduct infill surveys and replace multi‐vessel undershoots. The efficiency of the survey can further be increased when the autonomous marine vehicles are towing short streamers with multiple receivers. Synthetic tests show that the seismic images for swarm surveys are comparable to those from streamer surveys, while little variation in image quality is found when reducing the number of autonomous marine vehicles but equipping them with a short streamer with multiple receivers.     

Calibration of cross-line components for sea-bed 4C acquisition systems

Faithful recording of the elastic wavefield at the sea‐bed is required for quantitative applications of 4C seismic. The accuracy of the recorded vectorial wavefield depends on factors that vary from deployment to deployment. This paper focuses on one such factor: the interaction of the acquisition system with the sea‐bed, which is referred to here as coupling. We show, using multi‐azimuth data recorded with a cable‐based sea‐bed acquisition system, whose sensor housing is cylindrically shaped and with the in‐line geophone fixed to the cable, that coupling depends on the propagation direction and wave type (P‐ or S‐waves) of the incident wavefield. We show that coupling is more critical for S‐waves than for P‐waves. Detection of inconsistent coupling using both P‐ and S‐waves is therefore mandatory. A data‐driven processing method to compensate for the frequency‐dependent coupling response of the cross‐line geophone is derived. Its application to field data verifies the effectiveness of the method.     

Fidelity and repeatability of wave fields reconstructed from multicomponent streamer data

Wave field reconstruction – the estimation of a three‐dimensional (3D) wave field representing upgoing, downgoing or the combined total pressure at an arbitrary point within a marine streamer array – is enabled by simultaneous measurements of the crossline and vertical components of particle acceleration in addition to pressure in a multicomponent marine streamer. We examine a repeated sail line of North Sea data acquired by a prototype multicomponent towed‐streamer array for both wave field reconstruction fidelity (or accuracy) and reconstruction repeatability. Data from six cables, finely sampled in‐line but spaced at 75 m crossline, are reconstructed and placed on a rectangular data grid uniformly spaced at 6.25 m in‐line and crossline. Benchmarks are generated using recorded pressure data and compared with wave fields reconstructed from pressure alone, and from combinations of pressure, crossline acceleration and vertical acceleration. We find that reconstruction using pressure and both crossline and vertical acceleration has excellent fidelity, recapturing highly aliased diffractions that are lost by interpolation of pressure‐only data. We model wave field reconstruction error as a linear function of distance from the nearest physical sensor and find, for this data set with some mismatched shot positions, that the reconstructed wave field error sensitivity to sensor mispositioning is one‐third that of the recorded wave field sensitivity. Multicomponent reconstruction is also more repeatable, outperforming single‐component reconstruction in which wave field mismatch correlates with geometry mismatch. We find that adequate repeatability may mask poor reconstruction fidelity and that aliased reconstructions will repeat if the survey geometry repeats. Although the multicomponent 3D data have only 500 m in‐line aperture, limiting the attenuation of non‐repeating multiples, the level of repeatability achieved is extremely encouraging compared to full‐aperture, pressure‐only, time‐lapse data sets at an equivalent stage of processing.