Setting up Geometry

Recording lines

Sh
ot
lin
es
 Geometry

Seismic data contain headers with in-field geometry viz.

Northings & Eastings of shots & receivers, Elevations,
Shot depths, statics, Near surface velocities, etc.

These headers need to be updated using what is called

SPS files - one each for Shot, Receiver and their
Relationships. SPS stands for Shell Processing Support
– a format standardized by SEG.

After updating the Geometry it is possible to manipulate

the data in different ways enabling numerous QC and
display possibilities
Geometry Different Types of Gathers Contd ….
4. Common Offset gather
Mid Point's)
A Common Offset Gather is a
single fold section for a
particular offset – useful for
QC, AVO, and migration.
 Trace Headers Generation

 Generation of addresses to the traces

 Geographical positioning
 Facilitates for the unique identification
& Sorting with respect to a common group
(common shot, common receiver, common
midpoint & common offset)
Trace Headers Generation
Amp

-- Trace Header
(shot point no., coordinates,
-- Record length, sample rate,..etc.)
--
… Trace Amplitude - 1
…
… Trace Amplitude - 2
…
…
Trace Amplitude - 2500
…
EDITING TRACES
 Editing
Editing consists of manual/automatic muting/alteration of
seismic records for any /all of following traces

Dead channels

Noisy Channels

Leaky Channels

Reverse Channels

Spikes
For some difficult
data sets editing can
take up 80% of total
processing time
Editing

After correcting for reverse, dead & Noisy channels

Editing

A trace with an abnormal frequency spectrum

is a bad trace. Kill it!
Editing
Editing
Check for polarity of each trace & edit.
Editing

High amplitude linear noise may sometimes have to

be muted manually
 Lmo for identifying Reverse Polarity

R R R R R R R R R R R R R R

R
Indicates a
Reverse
trace
 LMO_Reverse_ Polartiy_swath66
R R R R R R R R R R R
R RR R RR R
Comparision of Stack_no_rev_edit_with_rev_edit_
Another example of comparision of Stack_no_rev_edit_with_rev_edit_
 Ground Roll Suppression

GROUND ROLL (PSEUD-RAYLEIGH WAVES) travel only along the

free surface of a semi-infinite elastic solid. Particle motion is a combination
of longitudinal and transverse vibration in a vertical plane. A particle
movement is always in the vertical plane and is elliptical and retrograde
relative to the direction of propagation. The amplitude of particle motion
decreases exponentially with depth below the surface....

GROUND ROLL has frequency

dependent velocity, typically
about 90% of the S wave
velocity. They are a nuisance for
a processor as they have high
amplitude and mask part of
reflected energy in a seismic
record.
Shot gathers onland showing First arrival, Reflections & Ground Roll
First Arrivals

Reflections

Groundroll
Shot gathers after suppressing ground roll using 2-d filter
 Amplitude decay

• Spherical Divergence
• Absorption losses
• Transmission losses
 Spherical Divergence
Correction
 Seismic Amplitude decays as a function of
time due to spherical spreading and inelastic
attenuation.
 Compensation is done using a gain function
that is inverse of the decay curve.
 Objective is to see that every layer of the
subsurface is represented with nearly same
amount of energy in a seismic trace
Amplitude Recovery:
GEOMETRIC SPREADING (SPHERICAL DIVERGENCE) ATTENUATION

ATTENUATION LOSSES DUE TO ABSORPTION

ATTENUATION COEFFICIENT
The Attenuation Coefficient 'a' in db per second is
defined as:
a T = 20 log10 (A / A0)
ABSORPTION COEFFICIENT
Investigations have shown that amplitude loss is a function of both time traveled and the frequency of the
wave. It is found that, approximately....

A is the amplitude at travel time time t;

alpha is the ABSORPTION COEFFICIENT (also called the
Attenuation Factor).
QUALITY FACTOR
The Absorption Coefficient is, itself, given by the following expression:

                      
Where:
Q is the QUALITY FACTOR.
TRANSMISSION LOSSES
This effect is due to the fact that at each interface in the earth some of the energy is
transmitted onwards and some is reflected back. It follows that less and less energy is
available to reach deeper and deeper horizons:
 Amplitude Balancing:

Normally Trace by Trace or Surface consistent

Amplitude Balancing is applied
Amplitude losses are compensated by….

Or spherical divergence corrections 1/V2T + some

other linear gain for transmission loss

Inverse Q may be also applied to compensate absorption

Amplitude Recovery &
Balancing
Amplitudes of seismic signal vary with time
primarily because of
Spherical Divergence – 1/r
Because wave front radius keeps increasing
Inelastic Attenuation
Due to preferential loss of amplitude of higher
frequencies inside earth

higher slope at early times

Lesser slope at later times

(In-elastic attenuation)
 Amplitude decay
Amplitude

Time 

Recovery
function
Amplitude

Decay curve

Time 
 Trace Normalization

 The amplitude values can also be scaled by

a scalar estimated in the user defined time
window to bring them up or down to an
observable range.

 Relative amplitude variation is preserved.

 Surface Consistent Balancing

• A trace could have abnormal amplitude (high or low) because

of
(a) Abnormal shot that the trace belongs to,
(b) Abnormal receiver coupling, or
(c) genuine geological reason.
If (a), then all traces in the shot gather would be abnormal.
For (b), all traces in the common receiver gather would be
abnormal.
 Surface consistency

• If we write these three amplitude factors as

As , Ar , and Ag

And observed amplitude of a trace as

A = As *Ar * Ag

log A = log As + log Ar + log Ag

By analysing amplitudes of all traces in different shots, these 3 factors can be separated and
amplitudes can be corrected for abnormal shots and receivers.
This is called as surface consistency – in contrast to scaling traces in each shot by a factor
independent of other shots.
Example of gain recovery on a marine record
 LINEAR TIME SHIFT
INVARIANCE
& CONVOLUTION
MODEL OF A SEISMIC TRACE
 Time shift Invariance

Impulse Impulse response

δt,0 rt =Reflectivity series
Earth
t=0

If we delay the input by k seconds, the output also gets

delayed by k seconds. This is called “Time shift
invariance”.

δt,k rt-k
Earth
t=0
 Linearity of a system
o

If we multiply the input by wk, the output also gets multiplied

by by wk .This property is called “Linearity of a system”.

wkδt,k
wk rt-k
Earth
t=0 t=k
 Additive property of a Linear system

If we sum over different inputs, the output also gets summed.

This is also a property of a Linear system.

∑wkδt,k
∑wk rt-k
t=k
Earth

i.e. Symbol for

convolution

W(t) ∑wk rt-k = wk* rt

Earth
Convolution Convolution model of a recorded seismogram

Add Noise

Signal S(T) = Input Wavelet W(t) * Earth Reflectivity R(t) + Noise N(t)
 Deconvolution Before Stack
 Earth acts as a high cut filter. Loss of high
frequencies results in loss of resolution.
 The High frequencies that are poorly
represented in the input can be brought on
par with those of better represented.
 Achieved through an inverse filter
application.
Amplitude  Schematic Illustration of
Deconvolution
Amplitude
Input

Amplitude 
Frequency 
output
Amplitude 

Inverse opr
Frequency 

Frequency 
Convolution
LENGTHENING OF SEISMIC WAVELET
A seismic source wavelet initially looks
like:

This is further modified by many processes in

its journey from Shot to reflectors and back to
receivers.
The recorded wavelet is consequently much longer than the input wavelet. This
lengthening means that wavelets reflected from closely spaced interfaces will
overlap in time and it may become impossible to identify separate reflectors:

Convolution

Effect of reverberations

High frequencies are attenuated

Deconvolution
Deconvolution as the inverse of convolution.

• Convolution model:

• Trace = Xt = W(eff)t * Rt
reflectivity
Effective wavelet contains wavelet &
short period multiples

Deconvolution:
Rt = W(eff)t -1 * Xt

Decon operator is designed from the data

Deconvolution

Deconvolution or converse of Convolution is an attempt to

obtain the earth reflectivity from signal measured

De-convolution enhances
spectral content seismic
data and can attenuate
multiples

De-convolution can be
applied on pre-stack (for
resolution enhancement)
as well as post stack data
(as demultiple step)
Deconvolution

Gathers without (above) & with spiking decon (below)

Note the
improved
resolution
on decon
gathers
Deconvolution

Resultant stack without (above) & with spiking decon (below)

Note the improved

resolution in
the stack
 Band Pass Filter
 Generally seismic data contain some noise
outside the seismic signal band.
Deconvolution also enhances this noise.

 To limit the frequencies to the seismic

range a band pass filter is conventionally
applied
(8-70 Hz)