ALBERT

Description: Microseismic monitoring is an essential tool for the characterization of hydraulic fractures. Fast estimation of the parameters that define a microseismic event is relevant to understand and control fracture development. The amount of data contained in the microseismic records however, poses a challenge for fast continuous detection and evaluation of the microseismic source parameters. Work inspired by the emerging field of Compressive Sensing has showed that it is possible to evaluate source parameters in a compressed domain, thereby reducing processing time. This technique performs well in scenarios where the amplitudes of the signal are above the noise level, as is often the case in microseismic monitoring using downhole tools. This paper extends the idea of the compressed domain processing to scenarios of microseismic monitoring using surface arrays, where the signal amplitudes are commonly at the same level as, or below, the noise amplitudes. To achieve this, we resort to the use of an imaging operator, which has previously been found to produce better results in detection and location of microseismic events from surface arrays. The operator in our method is formed by full-waveform elastodynamic Green's functions that are band-limited by a source time function and represented in the frequency domain. Where full-waveform Green's functions are not available, ray tracing can also be used to compute the required Green's functions. Additionally, we introduce the concept of the compressed inverse, which derives directly from the compression of the migration operator using a random matrix. The described methodology reduces processing time at a cost of introducing distortions into the results. However, the amount of distortion can be managed by controlling the level of compression applied to the operator. Numerical experiments using synthetic and real data demonstrate the reductions in processing time that can be achieved and exemplify the process of selecting the compression rate that produces a tolerable amount of distortion into the results.

Description: Microseismic monitoring is an essential tool for the characterization of hydraulic fractures. Fast estimation of the parameters that define a microseismic event is relevant to understand and control fracture development. The amount of data contained in the microseismic records however, poses a challenge for fast continuous detection and evaluation of the microseismic source parameters. Work inspired by the emerging field of Compressive Sensing has showed that it is possible to evaluate source parameters in a compressed domain, thereby reducing processing time. This technique performs well in scenarios where the amplitudes of the signal are above the noise level, as is often the case in microseismic monitoring using downhole tools. This paper extends the idea of the compressed domain processing to scenarios of microseismic monitoring using surface arrays, where the signal amplitudes are commonly at the same level as, or below, the noise amplitudes. To achieve this, we resort to the use of an imaging operator, which has previously been found to produce better results in detection and location of microseismic events from surface arrays. The operator in our method is formed by full-waveform elastodynamic Green's functions that are band-limited by a source time function and represented in the frequency domain. Where full-waveform Green's functions are not available, ray tracing can also be used to compute the required Green's functions. Additionally, we introduce the concept of the compressed inverse, which derives directly from the compression of the migration operator using a random matrix. The described methodology reduces processing time at a cost of introducing distortions into the results. However, the amount of distortion can be managed by controlling the level of compression applied to the operator. Numerical experiments using synthetic and real data demonstrate the reductions in processing time that can be achieved and exemplify the process of selecting the compression rate that produces a tolerable amount of distortion into the results.