Wave equation processing using finite-difference propagators, Part 1: Wavefield dissection and imaging of marine multicomponent seismic data

Abstract

Methods for wavefield injection are used in, for instance, reverse time extrapolation of shot gathers in reverse time migration. For correct injection of recorded data without any ambiguity of the propagation direction, the wavefield-injection methodology requires pressure and particle velocity data such as multicomponent towed marine or seabed seismic recordings. We discovered that by carefully considering the models (medium parameters and boundary conditions) for injection, wavefield injection of multicomponent data can also be used to solve several long-standing challenges in marine seismic data processing by means of conventional time-space-domain finite-difference propagators. We outlined and demonstrated several of these important applications including up-down separation of wavefields (deghosting), direct-wave removal, source-signature estimation, multiple removal, and imaging using primaries and multiples. Only acoustic models are considered, but the concepts are straightforward to generalize to elastodynamic and electromagnetic models.