Focal beam analysis for 3D acquisition geometries in complex media with GPU implementation

Abstract

Seismic acquisition geometries have a significant influence on the quality of seismic data in the oil and gas exploration process. Therefore, prior analyses are beneficial to the design of acquisition geometries before implementation of seismic acquisition. The focal beam analysis method can provide quantitative insights into the combined influence of acquisition geometries and subsurface structures. This approach involves a large calculation burden concerning 3D wavefield extrapolation in the case of complex media, thus inhibiting the practical application of focal beam analysis in complex media when using regular CPUs. Therefore, using a graphics processing unit (GPU) to accelerate focal beam analysis becomes imperative. We have developed a fast parallel algorithm to speed up the focal beam analysis for 3D acquisition geometries in complex media on GPUs. Three-dimensional numerical examples show that the GPU-based focal beam analysis runs about 17 times faster than a serial CPU-based one. We also demonstrate the validity and scalability of the proposed approach with numerical examples. The boost in performance afforded by the GPU architecture allows us to analyse 3D acquisition geometries in complex media with less time and at lower cost of hardware.