Marine Vibrator Array Design An OBS Example

Summary:

Marine seismic vibrators were introduced in the early 1970’s but have not achieved wide commercial use probably due to the relative simplicity and versatility of marine air-gun sources. There has recently been a resurgence of interested in marine vibrators due to their low environmental impact and because they are more controllable and efficient than air- gun arrays. In this paper we discuss the optimal design of marine vibrator sweeps for ocean-bottom seismic surveys using a sweep generation approach guided by signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). As example, we use the SNR estimated from ocean bottom recordings in the North Sea. We describe a vibrator tow depth optimization approach based on the minimum achievable frequency and sweep length and design low- and high-frequency sweeps covering the 3-125Hz band.