4D-READY SEISMIC WITH Q-MARINE

2001 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 671
Author(s):  
T. Brice ◽  
L. Larsen ◽  
S. Morice ◽  
M. Svendsun

A new concept for acquiring calibrated towed streamer seismic data is introduced through a new acquisition and processing system called ‘Q-Marine’. The specification of the new system has been defined by rigorous analysis of the factors that limit the sensitivity of seismic data in 4D studies and imaging. New sensor and streamer technology, new source technology and advances in positioning techniques and data processing have addressed these limitations.Sensitivity analysis revealed that the most significant perturbations to the seismic signal are swell noise and sensor sensitivity variations. Conventional analog groups of hydrophones are designed to suppress swell noise however a new technique for data-adaptive coherent noise attenuation delivers even greater noise suppression for densely spatially sampled single-sensor data.Although modern source controllers provide accurate airgun firing control, the signature of an airgun array may vary from shot to shot. This can be due to factors such as changes in the array geometry, air pressure variations, depth variations and wave action. A method for estimating the far-field signature of a source array is the Notional Source Method (proprietary to Schlumberger) which has been steadily refined since its first disclosure. A recent development compensates for variation in source array geometry by monitoring the position and azimuth of each subarray using GPS receivers mounted on the floats.New calibrated positioning and streamer control systems are part of the new acquisition system. Active vertical and lateral streamer control is achieved using steerable birds and positioning uncertainty is reduced through an in-built fully braced acoustic ranging system.Calibrated marine seismic data are achieved through quantifying the source output, the sensor responses and positioning uncertainty. The consequential improvements in seismic fidelity result in better imaging and more reliable 4D analysis.

Geophysics ◽  
1983 ◽  
Vol 48 (7) ◽  
pp. 854-886 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ken Larner ◽  
Ron Chambers ◽  
Mai Yang ◽  
Walt Lynn ◽  
Willon Wai

Despite significant advances in marine streamer design, seismic data are often plagued by coherent noise having approximately linear moveout across stacked sections. With an understanding of the characteristics that distinguish such noise from signal, we can decide which noise‐suppression techniques to use and at what stages to apply them in acquisition and processing. Three general mechanisms that might produce such noise patterns on stacked sections are examined: direct and trapped waves that propagate outward from the seismic source, cable motion caused by the tugging action of the boat and tail buoy, and scattered energy from irregularities in the water bottom and sub‐bottom. Depending upon the mechanism, entirely different noise patterns can be observed on shot profiles and common‐midpoint (CMP) gathers; these patterns can be diagnostic of the dominant mechanism in a given set of data. Field data from Canada and Alaska suggest that the dominant noise is from waves scattered within the shallow sub‐buttom. This type of noise, while not obvious on the shot records, is actually enhanced by CMP stacking. Moreover, this noise is not confined to marine data; it can be as strong as surface wave noise on stacked land seismic data as well. Of the many processing tools available, moveout filtering is best for suppressing the noise while preserving signal. Since the scattered noise does not exhibit a linear moveout pattern on CMP‐sorted gathers, moveout filtering must be applied either to traces within shot records and common‐receiver gathers or to stacked traces. Our data example demonstrates that although it is more costly, moveout filtering of the unstacked data is particularly effective because it conditions the data for the critical data‐dependent processing steps of predictive deconvolution and velocity analysis.


Geophysics ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 82 (6) ◽  
pp. V397-V411 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierre Turquais ◽  
Endrias G. Asgedom ◽  
Walter Söllner

We have developed a method for suppressing coherent noise from seismic data by using the morphological differences between the noise and the signal. This method consists of three steps: First, we applied a dictionary learning method on the data to extract a redundant dictionary in which the morphological diversity of the data is stored. Such a dictionary is a set of unit vectors called atoms that represent elementary patterns that are redundant in the data. Because the dictionary is learned on data contaminated by coherent noise, it is a mix of atoms representing signal patterns and atoms representing noise patterns. In the second step, we separate the noise atoms from the signal atoms using a statistical classification. Hence, the learned dictionary is divided into two subdictionaries: one describing the morphology of the noise and the other one describing the morphology of the signal. Finally, we separate the seismic signal and the coherent noise via morphological component analysis (MCA); it uses sparsity with respect to the two subdictionaries to identify the signal and the noise contributions in the mixture. Hence, the proposed method does not use prior information about the signal and the noise morphologies, but it entirely adapts to the signal and the noise of the data. It does not require a manual search for adequate transforms that may sparsify the signal and the noise, in contrast to existing MCA-based methods. We develop an application of the proposed method for removing the mechanical noise from a marine seismic data set. For mechanical noise that is coherent in space and time, the results show that our method provides better denoising in comparison with the standard FX-Decon, FX-Cadzow, and the curvelet-based denoising methods.


Geophysics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 85 (1) ◽  
pp. V1-V10
Author(s):  
Julián L. Gómez ◽  
Danilo R. Velis ◽  
Juan I. Sabbione

We have developed an empirical-mode decomposition (EMD) algorithm for effective suppression of random and coherent noise in 2D and 3D seismic amplitude data. Unlike other EMD-based methods for seismic data processing, our approach does not involve the time direction in the computation of the signal envelopes needed for the iterative sifting process. Instead, we apply the sifting algorithm spatially in the inline-crossline plane. At each time slice, we calculate the upper and lower signal envelopes by means of a filter whose length is adapted dynamically at each sifting iteration according to the spatial distribution of the extrema. The denoising of a 3D volume is achieved by removing the most oscillating modes of each time slice from the noisy data. We determine the performance of the algorithm by using three public-domain poststack field data sets: one 2D line of the well-known Alaska 2D data set, available from the US Geological Survey; a subset of the Penobscot 3D volume acquired offshore by the Nova Scotia Department of Energy, Canada; and a subset of the Stratton 3D land data from South Texas, available from the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas at Austin. The results indicate that random and coherent noise, such as footprint signatures, can be mitigated satisfactorily, enhancing the reflectors with negligible signal leakage in most cases. Our method, called empirical-mode filtering (EMF), yields improved results compared to other 2D and 3D techniques, such as [Formula: see text] EMD filter, [Formula: see text] deconvolution, and [Formula: see text]-[Formula: see text]-[Formula: see text] adaptive prediction filtering. EMF exploits the flexibility of EMD on seismic data and is presented as an efficient and easy-to-apply alternative for denoising seismic data with mild to moderate structural complexity.


Geophysics ◽  
1982 ◽  
Vol 47 (9) ◽  
pp. 1273-1284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ken Larner ◽  
Dave Hale ◽  
Sharon Misener Zinkham ◽  
Charles Hewlitt

Marine seismic data are generally contaminated with both “bubble pulses” and “tow noise.” Air gun sources are deployed in arrays designed to reduce the effective level of the bubble pulses. Because the signal from a source array is profoundly altered by the filter characteristics of the earth and because the received signal is subjected to noise‐generating computer processes such as deconvolution, array designs should be optimized to obtain the minimum aggregate noise, and hence the greatest reflection stand‐out, in output traces. For a fixed air‐compressor capacity, a trade‐off in array design exists between maximizing source strength and the fine tuning required to maximize the first‐pulse‐to‐bubble ratio. Except for shallow, high‐resolution surveys where the deconvolution step can be bypassed, optimum suppression of total noise in the output can often be obtained using the available air capacity to increase the source strength of a moderately tuned array, rather than to achieve fine tuning of the array. Processing noise produced by deconvolution will prevent detection of a weak reflection closely following a strong one if the ratio of the two is more than about 21 dB, no matter how finely tuned the source array may be.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 04-06
Author(s):  
Bridget L. Lawrence ◽  
Etim D. Uko ◽  
Chibuogwu L. Eze ◽  
Chicozie Israel-Cookey ◽  
Iyeneomie Tamunobereton-ari ◽  
...  

Three-dimensional (3D) land seismic datasets were acquired from Central Depobelt in the Niger Delta region, Nigeria, with with the aim of attenuating ground roll noise from the dataset. The Omega (Schlumberger) software 2018 version was used along with frequency offset coherent noise suppression (FXCNS) and Anomalous Amplitude Attenuation (AAA) algorithms for ground roll attenuation. From the results obtained, Frequency Offset Coherent Noise Suppression (FXCNS) attenuates ground roll while AAA algorithm attenuates the residual high amplitude noise from the seismic data. Average frequency of the ground roll in the seismic data is 10.50Hz which falls within the actual range of ground roll frequency which is within the range of 3.00 – 18.00Hz. The average velocity of the ground roll in the seismic data is 477.36ms-1 while the velocity of ground roll ranges between 347.44 and 677.37ms-1. The wavelength of ground roll in the seismic data is 50.28m. The amplitude of the ground roll of -6.24dB is maximum at 4.2Hz. Frequency of signal ranges between 10.21 and 25.12Hz with an average of 17.67Hz. Signal amplitude of -8.32dB is maximum at 6.30Hz, while its wavelength is 57.12m. The results of this work can be used in the seismic source-receiver design for application in the area of study. Moreover, with ground roll noise attenuated, a better image of the subsurface geology is obtained hence reducing the risk of obtaining a wild cat drilling.


Geophysics ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 61 (6) ◽  
pp. 1804-1812 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ho‐Young Lee ◽  
Byung‐Koo Hyun ◽  
Young‐Sae Kong

We have improved the quality of high‐resolution marine seismic data using a simple PC‐based acquisition and processing system. The system consists of a PC, an A/D converter, and a magneto‐optical disk drive. The system has been designed to acquire single‐channel data at up to 60,000 samples per second and to perform data processing of seismic data by a simple procedure. Test surveys have been carried out off Pohang, southern East Sea of Korea. The seismic systems used for the test were an air gun and a 3.5 kHz sub‐bottom profiling system. Spectral characteristics of the sources were analyzed. Simple digital signal processes which include gain recovery, deconvolution, band‐pass filter, and swell filter were performed. The quality of seismic sections produced by the system is greatly enhanced in comparison to analog sections. The PC‐based system for acquisition and processing of high‐resolution marine seismic data is economical and versatile.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document