Summary

Harmonics in vibrator technology are a common phenomenon and often viewed as undesirable noise. Their presence is widely discussed and treated in the context of land vibrators, with much emphasis dedicated to their removal. However, the discussion on marine vibrator harmonics remains limited. Despite being weaker than the fundamental frequency signal, we show that marine vibrator harmonics can in principle be harnessed to broaden the frequency band of interest for subsurface imaging. This is made possible by our highly reliable marine vibrator source, capable of producing high-fidelity repeatable sweeps, and our accurate notional source estimation method. We demonstrate that harmonics can significantly enhance the frequency band for imaging without requiring any additional processes, achieving the functionality of acting as an additional high-frequency source for imaging the shallow zones.