Comprehensive assessment of seismic acquisition geometries by focal beams—Part II: Practical aspects and examples

The acquisition geometry of a 3-D seismic survey should be designed in such a way that it allows high-quality images and fulfills economical constraints. Focal source beams and focal detector beams are used to analyze and design field geometries. An attractive property is that the focal source and detector beams can be computed and evaluated separately. Seismic quality attributes such as resolution, noise suppression rate, angle-averaged amplitude, and angle-dependent amplitude information can be obtained efficiently from those beams. Examples confirm the theory that source and detector distributions may complement each other to achieve a high resolution. This important property can be used to design cost-effective geometries. The acquisition design criteria for reliable amplitude versus ray parameter information turn out to be more stringent and may require a compromise in resolution.