Full waveform inversion comparison of conventional and broadband marine seismic streamer data, NW Shelf Australia

Abstract

The lack of low-frequency information in conventional marine seismic streamer data inhibits the success of frequency-domain full waveform inversion (FWI). Low frequencies are typically absent in marine seismic data due to the low-cut spectral responses of airgun sources and hydrophone receivers, and the fact that the air-water interface produces source and receiver ghost reflections which create notch frequencies in the data amplitude spectrum. Advances in broadband streamer acquisition, such as the variable depth towed streamer, allow us to extend the low and high bounds of the useful frequency bandwidth in the seismic data spectrum. We illustrate the application of frequency-domain FWI to two 2D seismic data sets acquired simultaneously offshore North West Australia. Both data sets were acquired together, one with a conventional streamer, and the other with a variable depth streamer configuration. Our examples demonstrate that the FWI results are clearly superior when using the broadband variable depth streamer data, compared to using the conventional streamer data.