Attenuating primaries and free‐surface multiples of vertical cable (VC) data while preserving receiver ghosts of primaries

Abstract

Marine vertical cable (VC) data contain primaries, receiver ghosts, free‐surface multiples, and internal multiples just like towed‐streamer data. However, the imaging of towed‐streamer data is based on primary reflections, while the emerging imaging algorithms of VC data tend to use the receiver ghosts of primary reflections instead of the primaries themselves. I present an algorithm for attenuating primaries, free‐surface multiples, and the receiver ghosts of free‐surface multiples while preserving the receiver ghosts of primaries. My multiple attenuation algorithm of VC data is based on an inverse scattering approach known, which is a predict‐then‐subtract method. It assumes that surface seismic data are available or that they can be computed from VC data after an up/down wavefield separation at the receiver locations (streamer data add to VC data some of the wave paths needed for multiple attenuation). The combination of surface seismic data with VC data allows one to predict free‐surface multiples and receiver ghosts as well as the receiver ghosts of primary reflections. However, if the direct wave arrivals are removed from the VC data, this combination will not predict the receiver ghosts of primary reflections. I use this property to attenuate primaries, free‐surface multiples, and receiver ghosts from VC data, preserving only the receiver ghosts of primaries. This method can be used for multicomponent ocean bottom cable data (i.e., arrays of sea‐floor geophones and hydrophones) without any modification to attenuate primaries, free‐surface multiples, and the receiver ghosts of free‐surface multiples while preserving the receiver ghosts of primaries.