Elimination of Noise Caused by Spikes and Bursts in Vibroseis Data

Abstract

—Seismic recording systems without a telemetry system have often been affected by electromagnetic induced spikes or bursts, which lead to strong data distortions combined with the correlation process of the vibroseis method. Partial or total loss of the desired seismic information is possible if no automatic spike and burst reduction is available in the field prior to vertical stacking and correlation of the field record.¶Currently, combined with the use of modern telemetry recording systems, the most common noise reduction methods in vibroseis techniques (e.g., spike and burst reduction, diversity stack) are already applied in the field to reduce noise in a very early state. The success of these automatic correction methods depends on the fundamental principles of the recording situation, the actual characteristic of the distorting noise and the parameter justification by the operator. Since field data are usually correlated and already vertical stacked in the field to minimize logistical and processing costs, no subsequent parameter corrections are possible to optimize the noise reduction after correlation and vertical stacking of a production record.¶The noise reduction method described in this paper uses final recorded and stacked vibroseis field data at the correlated or uncorrelated stage of processing. The method eliminates signal artifacts caused by spikes or bursts combined with a standard convolution process. A modified correlation operator compresses the noise artifact in time using a single trace convolution process. After elimination of this compressed noise, re-application of the convolution process leads to a noise-corrected replacement of the input data. The efficiency of the method is shown with a synthetic data set and a real vibroseis field record. Furthermore, several thousand records from a 2-D deep seismic reflection project could be corrected with good results using this method.