Migration-Based Seismic Trace Interpolation of Sparse Converted Phase Micro-Seismic Data

Abstract

Multi-component elastic seismic data collected at large offsets have the potential to be used in micro seismic imaging and monitoring. However, types of receiver surface deployments used for micro-seismic monitoring are generally very sparse, and thus the data used for imaging from these receivers cause receiver-migration-operator artifacts that severely contaminate the shallow part of the image. In this study, we present a data-driven method that alleviates these imaging artifacts. The method is based on converted-phase elastic seismic migration and de-migration. We show that despite the spatial aliasing of the recorded data, we are able to suppress the receiver migration-operator artifacts and reconstruct the shallow part of the image. The merit of this approach is that it is elastic, fully data-driven (i.e, independent of source parameters), and does not suffer from migration operator source aliasing, when a small number of shots or micro-seismic events are used. We present a derivation of the method and test it with a synthetic model and a field data set from a geothermal reservoir with abundant natural and induced seismicity.