Full-wave-equation depth extrapolation for true amplitude migration based on a dual-sensor seismic acquisition system

Abstract

Most depth extrapolation schemes are based on a one-way wave equation, which possesses limited ability to provide the true amplitude values of reflectors that are highly important for amplitude-versus-offset inversion. After analysing the weaknesses of current migration methods and explaining the reason why wavefields cannot be extrapolated using the fullwave equation in the depth direction, a full-wave-equation migration method based on a new seismic acquisition system is proposed to provide accurately dynamic information of reflection interfaces for migration. In this new seismic acquisition system, double sensor data are provided to solve the acoustic wave equation in the depth domain accurately. To test the performance of recovering the true amplitudes of the full-wave-equation migration, we used a single shot gather and several multiple shot gathers produced by a 2-D numerical modelling technique to demonstrate that our methodology provides better estimated true amplitudes than that of the conventional Kirchhoff and reverse time migration algorithms through comparison of the amplitudes of the target reflectors with its theoretical reflection coefficients. Because double sensors are applied to implement the full-wave-equation migration, it is necessary to study the perfect distance between the double sensors to diminish the migration error for future practical exploration. Based on the application of the full-wave-equation migration method to the first set of actual seismic data collected from our double sensor acquisition system, our proposed method yields higher imaging quality than that of conventional methods. Numerical experiments and actual seismic data show that our proposed method has built a new bridge between true amplitude common-shot migration and full-wave-equation depth extrapolation.