Study of a full-wave equation-based seismic illumination analysis

Abstract

Recently, the seismic illumination analysis has progressed considerably in methodology which has been developed not only from one-way wave equation-based illumination to full-wave equation-based illumination but also from conventional illumination analysis to directional illumination analysis with local plane-wave decomposition. Because of the inherent defects of the one-way wave equation, the full-wave equation-based seismic illumination methods have increasingly attracted more attention. However, full-wave equation-based wavefield includes both downgoing and upgoing waves, such as transmissive, turning, and reflected waves. This hybrid wavefield can mislead us in seismic illumination analysis. For the sake of a preferable seismic illumination analysis method, we separated upgoing and downgoing wavefields in the time domain using Poynting vector and defined the incident and reflected illumination analysis functions based on the separated wavefields. Furthermore, we applied these two new illumination functions in seismic illumination analysis with the Sigsbee2a model. Multiple-shot illumination results show that the full-wave illumination and incident illumination maps are consistent with the seismic migration image. Because of no interference caused by the interactions between upgoing and downgoing waves, the incident illumination is superior for illumination analysis. Successful application of the full-wave equation-based incident and reflected illumination functions in the actual acquisition direction design of marine seismic geometry verifies their applicability and reveals their excellent prospects.