ATTENUATION OF COHERENT NOISE IN MARINE SEISMIC EXPLORATION USING VERY LONG ARRAYS *

Abstract

AbstractThe use of arrays to separate primary reflections from unwanted coherent seismic events is common practice in land seismic surveys. Very long source and receiver arrays have been used recently to reduce the effects of waterbottom multiples on marine seismic data.The source array consists of five uniformly spaced identical subarrays, each with five different airguns, where the distance between the subarrays may vary from 20 m56 m. The volume of each subarray is 10.3 1 (630 cu.in.) which gives a total volume of the array of 51.5 1 (3150 cu.in.) operated at a pressure of 14 MPa (2000 psi). In order to have a flexible receiver system it was decided to implement the extended receiver array in data processing by computing a weighted sum of two to five traces. The hydrophone cable consists of fifty‐four channels with a group length of 50 m.Data shot with the superlong airgun array are processed by a combination of standard techniques and special procedures. In particular, the quality of the stack section is improved by using a weighted stack. The stack weights are computed by a program which takes into account the primary‐to‐multiple ratio.Comparisons with conventional data show significant improvements in data quality obtained by using the superlong airgun array. Examples show that the waterbottom multiples have been strongly attenuated and the deep seismic events have been enhanced.The combined array response function for dipping events is given in an appendix.