EFFICIENT MULTICHANNEL FILTERING OF SEISMIC DATA1

Multichannel filters are used to eliminate coherent noise from surface seismic data, for wavefield separation from VSP stacks, and for signal enhancement. Their success generally depends on the choice of the filter parameters and the domain of application. Multichannel filters can be applied to shots (monitors), common-receiver traces, CDP traces and stacked sections. Cascaded applications in these domains are currently performed in the seismic industry for better noise suppression and for signal enhancement. One-step shot-domain filtering is adequate for some applications. However, in practice, cascaded applications in shot-and common-receiver domains usually give better results when the S/N ratio is low. Multichannel filtering after stacking (especially after repeated applications in shot and/or receiver domains) may create undesirable results such as artificial continuations, or smearing and smoothing of small features such as small throw faults and fine stratigraphic details. Consequently, multichannel filtering after stacking must be undertaken with the utmost care and occasionally only as a last resort. Multichannel filters with fan-shaped responses (linear moveout filters) should be applied after NMO correction. These are the filters commonly used in the seismic industry where they have such names as velocity filters, moveout filters, f-k filters and coherency filters. Filtering before NMO correction may result in break-up and flattening especially of those shallow reflection events with relatively higher curvatures and diffractions. NMO correction is needed prior to wavefield separation from VSP stacks for the same practical reasons outlined above whenever source-receiver offsets are involved. Creation of artificial lineup and smearing at the outputs of multichannel filters is presently the common practical concern. Optimum multichannel filters with well-defined pass, reject and transition bands overcome the latter problems when applied before stacking and after NMO correction. The trace dimension of these filters must be kept small to avoid such lineups and the smoothing of small structures. Good results can be obtained with only five traces, but seven traces seems to be a better compromise both in surface and well seismic applications. The so-called f-k filtering and τ-p domain filtering are no exceptions to the above practical considerations. Residual static computations after multichannel filtering also need special consideration. Since multichannel filtering improves spatial continuity, residual static algorithms using local correlation, i.e. nonsurface-consistent algorithms, may be impractical especially after multichannel filtering.