Reduction of crosstalk in blended-shot migration

Abstract

When migrating more than one shot at the same time, the nonlinearity of the imaging condition causes the final image to contain so-called crosstalk, i.e., the results of the interference of wavefields associated with different sources. We studied various ideas of using weights in the imaging condition, called encoding, for the reduction of crosstalk. We combined the ideas of random phase and/or amplitude encoding and random alteration of the sign with additional multiplication with powers of the imaginary unit. This procedure moved part of the crosstalk to the imaginary part of the resulting image, leaving the desired crosscorrelation in the real part. In this way, the final image is less impaired. Our results indicated that with a combination of these weights, the crosstalk can be reduced by a factor of four as compared with unencoded shot blending. Moreover, we evaluated the selection procedure of sources contributing to each group of shots. We compared random choice with a deterministic procedure, in which the random numbers were exchanged for numbers similar to those of a Costas array. These numbers preserve certain properties of a random choice, but avoid the occurrence of patterns in the distribution. Our objective was to avoid nearby source being added to the same group of shots, which cannot be guaranteed with a random choice. Finally, we determined that the crosstalk noise can be reduced after migration by image processing.