Separation and noise removal for multiple vibratory source seismic data

Abstract

The invention discloses a way to recover separated seismograms with reduced interference noise by processing vibroseis data recorded (or computer simulated) with multiple vibrators shaking simultaneously or nearly simultaneously (). A preliminary estimate of the separated seismograms is used to obtain improved seismograms (). The preliminary estimate is convolved with the vibrator signature and then used to update the seismogram. Primary criteria for performing the update include fitting the field data and satisfying typical criteria of noise-free seismograms (). Alternative ways to update are disclosed, including signal extraction, modeled noise extraction, constrained optimization based separation, and penalized least-squares based separation. The method is particularly suited for removing noise caused by separating the combined record into separate records for each vibrator, and is advantageous where the number of sweeps is fewer than the number of vibrators ().