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10.1190/1.2358415
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Wyatt, 1981; Gaiser et al., 1983. This technique has been extended
ABSTRACT to imaging crosswell seismic data Lazaratos et al., 1995. Migration
is applicable for imaging complex structures. Various migration
We illustrate the use of mode-converted transmitted e.g., algorithms Keho, 1984; Chang and McMechan, 1986; Sun and
PS- or SP- waves in vertical seismic profiling VSP data McMechan, 2001 developed and used for VSP reflection imaging
for imaging areas above receivers where reflected waves can- are essentially the same as those for surface seismic reflections.
not illuminate. Three depth-domain imaging techniques Khler and Koenig 1986 compare the VSPCDP transform and mi-
move-out correction, common-depth-point CDP mapping, gration results using both synthetic and field walkaway VSP data.
and prestack migration are described and used for imag- Unlike for reflection imaging techniques, publications on trans-
ing the transmitted waves. Moveout correction converts an mission imaging are quite limited. To the best of our knowledge, the
offset VSP trace into a zero-offset trace. CDP mapping novel approach of imaging with transmitted PS-waves was first in-
maps each sample on an input trace to the location where troduced by Keho 1986. He used Kirchhoff migration to image a
the mode conversion occurs. For complex media, prestack Michigan reef with transmitted PS-waves generated from an offset
migration e.g., reverse-time migration is used. By using surface source and recorded by geophones below the reef in a verti-
both synthetic and field VSP data, we demonstrate that
cal borehole. Sheley and Schuster 2003 reintroduced the concept
images derived from transmissions complement those from
with applications to both VSP and crosshole seismic geometries.
reflections. As an important application, we show that
They also presented a new imaging approach for transmitted PS-
transmitted waves can illuminate zones above highly de-
waves based on interferometric theory, which they termed reduced-
viated or horizontal wells, a region not imaged by reflection
time migration, to increase migration accuracy. They focused on
data. Because all of these benefits are obtained without
imaging for steeply dipping geologic interfaces, such as reef bound-
extra data acquisition cost, we believe transmission imag-
aries and salt flanks often encountered in the Gulf of Mexico.
ing techniques will become widely adopted by the oil in-
Although the concept and theory of imaging the subsurface with
dustry.
mode-converted transmissions are established, applying them to the
petroleum industry has received little attention. With emphasis on
practical applications, we show three applications of imaging with
mode-converted transmitted waves, illustrated with both synthetic
INTRODUCTION
and field data. The three approaches are moveout correction, CDP
In offset vertical seismic profiling VSP data, four types of waves mapping, and depth migration. The term C-wave commonly refers
are often observed: transmitted P-waves, transmitted PS-waves, re- to reflected converted waves, so we use the term T-wave to refer to
flected P-waves, and reflected PS-waves. All but mode-converted transmitted converted waves.
transmitted PS-waves have been used to derive velocity models and We also demonstrate that T-waves can illuminate regions where
to construct images. conventional reflection data cannot, and vice versa. Consequently, a
The VSP common-depth-point transformation VSPCDP trans- combination of the images from conventional reflected P- or C-
form and migration approaches have been published for construct- waves and T-waves provides a more comprehensive image of the
ing images from VSP reflections. The transform Hardage, 2000 subsurface. With horizontal wells becoming common, we demon-
moves each sample in the input data to the location where it was re- strate that the T-wave can illuminate areas above horizontal wells
flected. Data falling in the same bin are then stacked Wyatt and a region not imaged by reflection data.
Manuscript received by the Editor November 28, 2005; revised manuscript received June 20, 2006; published online October 20, 2006.
1
Saudi Aramco, Geophysics Technology Team, E&PE Department, Dhahran 31311, Saudi Arabia. E-mail: yi.luo@aramco.com; yuchun.wang@aramco.com;
mohammad.alfaraj@aramco.com.
2
WesternGeco, Petroleum Center, Tower B, 3rd Floor, P. O. Box 31791, Al-Khobar 31952, Saudi Arabia. E-mail: qing.liu@aramco.com.
2006 Society of Exploration Geophysicists. All rights reserved.
S241
S242 Luo et al.
THREE METHODS OF T-WAVE IMAGING trajectory consisting of all possible x,z points satisfying equation 2
forms the migration impulse response, or migration operator, of the
As mentioned, four types of waves are often observed in a typical T-wave.
VSP survey: transmitted P-waves, reflected P-waves, mode-con- There are two main differences between the familiar 2D reflection
verted reflected waves C-waves, and mode-converted transmitted migration operator which is an ellipse in a constant-velocity model
waves T-waves. Of these four wave types, transmitted P-waves and the 2D T-wave migration operator shown in Figure 2. First, the
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e.g., the first arrivals are often used to derive interval velocities.
T-wave migration operator is asymmetric about source and receiver:
The reflected P- and C-waves have been adopted broadly to image
The small end of the operator is toward the P-wave side, and the big
subsurface areas beneath the downhole geophones. In contrast, the
end is toward the S-wave side. In the 3D case, the T-waves migra-
T-wave is mostly ignored in practice, although its signal-to-noise
tion impulse response is shaped like an egg; hence, we use the term
S/N ratio is often higher than the reflected P- and C-waves. In this
ovoid to describe this deformed, oblate ellipsoid Sheley and
section, we explain the T-wave imaging principle and describe appli-
Schuster, 2003 and to distinguish it from the well-known migration
cations for moveout correction, CDP mapping, and migration.
ellipsoid for reflected P-waves. To avoid introducing more new
The essential concept for T-wave imaging is to focus the recorded
T-wave energy to places where conversions occur. The concept is terms, we refer to both the 2D and 3D migration impulse responses
similar to reflection imaging, where we map the reflected energy for T-waves as ovoids. Second, unlike the reflection case where both
back to where it reflects. We can derive the migration formula for source and receiver reside at the two foci within the ellipse, the
T-wave imaging as shown in Figure 1. The total traveltime of the source location could be outside, on, or inside the ovoid, depending
T-wave from source S to receiver G can be expressed by on the value of TSG:
TSG = TDP + TDS , 1 TSG = T P ,
where TDP is the time for the downgoing P-wave traveling from ovoid reduced to one point
source S to conversion point C and TDS is the time of the converted located at receiver location G, 3a
downgoing S-wave traveling from C to receiver G. We focus on the
theory and applications of converted transmitted PS-waves. Our T P TSG TS
methodology can be extended to other types of converted transmit- source outside of ovoid, 3b
ted waves, such as SP, PSP, and SPS.
Making traveltime TSG fixed, the possible conversion points x,z TSG = TS ,
in a 2D case must satisfy equation 1, which can be expanded as fol-
source S on the ovoid, 3c
lows Sheley and Schuster, 2003:
TSG TS ,
TSG = constant =
1
xs x2 + zs z2 both source and receiver within the
Vp
ovoid;no T-wave exists. 3d
+
1
xr x2 + zr z2 , 2 Here, T P and TS are the P-wave and S-wave traveltimes from S to G,
Vs
respectively.
where V p and Vs are the velocities of P- and S-waves, respectively,
and xs,zs and xr,zr are the source and receiver coordinates. The
Figure 1. Concept of T-wave imaging: DP = direct P-wave Figure 2. Two-dimensional migration impulse response of a T-wave
raypath, DS = raypath of a converted downgoing S-wave, and C and a C-wave in a constant-velocity medium. In the 3D case, the
= conversion point on interface L. The purpose of T-wave imaging migration impulse forms an ovoid deformed or flattened ellipsoid
is to move the transmitted arrival recorded in geophone G back to C. for a constant-velocity medium.
Transmitted PS-wave imaging S243
Interestingly, the ovoid also includes the converted reflection volve lateral mixing; the resulting images are singlefold. When the
points. In Figure 2, lines SA and SB are tangent to the ovoid. Points A input waves have a high S/N ratio as is often the case for T-waves,
and B, the tangent points between these two lines and the ovoid, sep- stacking may be unnecessary. The traces after moveout correction
arate the mode-converted transmitted and reflected points on the op- may be more suitable for tracking lithological changes away from
erator. There will be no T-wave when TSG TS. In this case, the mi- the wellbore than CDP mapping or migration.
gration operator becomes the impulse response for the C-waves In our algorithms, the traveltime T is shifted by a small t, which
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only. In Appendix A, we prove that rays from S to C and C to G satis- is the difference between the picked and calculated direct P-wave
fy Snells law. first arrivals for this trace. Such a shift t is introduced by Sheley and
The conversion points for T-waves are above the geophone loca- Schuster 2003 in their reduced-time migration theory to decrease
tions and the reflection points are below, so the areas illuminated by the imaging/mapping inaccuracy caused by velocity errors.
them are different and complement each other. For a typical VSP sur- Reverse time migration Chang and McMechan, 1986 is adopted
vey geometry with downhole receivers deployed along a deviated or for T-wave imaging. The migration process includes three steps: 1
horizontal borehole, Figure 3 illustrates that areas illuminated by re- compute the imaging time from source to each grid point in the out-
flections can be expanded significantly by T-wave transmissions. put image by ray tracing or solving the eikonal equation over a
For typical VSP surveys, data redundancy may not be sufficient to P-wave velocity model, 2 reverse-time extrapolate the recorded
cancel nonspecular waves required by migration approaches. To ad- T-wavefield by a finite-difference solution of the acoustic-wave
equation over an S-wave velocity model, and 3 apply the imaging
dress this issue, moveout correction and CDP mapping are intro-
condition, i.e., assign the sample at the imaging time of the extrapo-
duced. Unlike migration, which spreads a sample on the ovoid, both
lated wavefield as the output value.
CDP mapping and moveout methods move a sample to a single loca-
Separating various wave modes in VSP data is an essential step for
tion computed by ray tracing. For any given depth z in a known
obtaining clean reflection and transmission images. The process in-
velocity model, we trace a ray from the source to the receiver, with
cludes two operations by taking advantage of orthogonal particle
PS-wave conversion occurring at z. By doing so, we can obtain the
motion and moveout differences for P- and S-waves DiSiena et al.,
total traveltime T and x-coordinate of the conversion point at z. For
1984; Hardage, 2000. First, we rotate the horizontal radial and ver-
the CDP mapping method, the sample at time t of the input VSP trace
tical components along the polarization direction of the P-wave first
at xr,zr is mapped to conversion point x,z in the output depth sec-
arrival. The rotation results in two components. One is the direct
tion. This process moves the sample in both the lateral and vertical
component, containing transmitted downgoing P-waves and reflect-
directions. For moveout correction, the input sample is only mapped ed upgoing S-waves. The other is the perpendicular component, con-
to z within the same trace, and no lateral movement is performed taining reflected upgoing P-waves and T-waves. A median filter can
i.e., the lateral coordinate x of the computed conversion point is ig- be applied to the perpendicular component to obtain the T-waves.
nored. After moveout correction, the sample at time t in the input The reflected upgoing P-waves can be obtained by subtracting the
trace at xr,zr is settled at xr,z. For moveout correction, the sample extracted T-waves from the perpendicular component.
is only moved inside the same trace; therefore, it is a trace-to-trace
one trace in, one trace out process.
Moveout correction has two advantages. First, it can be applied to SYNTHETIC DATA EXAMPLE
both reflections and transmissions and can produce a seamlessly
combined image see Figures 7a and 10a. Second, it does not in- To validate the basic idea of T-wave imaging, a synthetic offset
VSP data set was generated using a 2D elastic-wave-equation mod-
eling algorithm developed by Fei and Larner 1995. The V p and Vs
velocity models are shown in Figure 4. It is a 10-layer model for V p
and a seven-layer model for Vs. The model size extends 6200 m deep
and 1660 m laterally. A total of 620 downhole geophones at 10-m
depth intervals are simulated on the left side of the model from sur-
face to bottom. The source is located at the upper-right corner, with
an offset of 1660 m from the wellhead. There is a 20-m-thick thin
layer 540560 m depth in the P-wave model and two layers with
slight velocity gradients in both the vertical and horizontal direc-
tions: layer six 22003300 m and layer eight 39504550 m.
Neither thin layers nor velocity gradients are included in the S-wave
velocity model. The horizontal x- and vertical z-components of the
synthetic data are shown in Figure 5. The wavefield is first separated
into the direct and perpendicular components. Applying a median
filter on the perpendicular component produces the desired upgoing
P- and T-waves Figure 6.
Moveout correction can be applied separately to the reflected up-
going P- and T-waves. The results after applying moveout correction
on both waves can be displayed in a combined picture Figure 7a.
Figure 3. By using both T-waves and reflected waves, the total The well trajectories, or the receiver positions, are marked by the
imaged area is expanded to cover above and below the receivers for a
deviated or horizontal-well offset VSP with source point S. T-wave solid diagonal line. Clearly, the reflected upgoing P-waves are
imaging is especially beneficial for deviated or horizontal wells mapped to the area below the receivers, or the solid line, and the
because of the reflection blind zone. T-waves are mapped to the area above the receivers. This example
S244 Luo et al.
demonstrates three key points. First, the T-waves can image the areas
above the geophone locations, and reflected upgoing waves can cov-
er the areas below. Second, the result after moveout correction is a
singlefold image, suitable for lateral lithological studies. Third, the
upgoing P-wave image is contaminated by multiples that are barely
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tained by CDP mapping the data in Figure 9 into the correct both lat-
eral and vertical reflection- and transmission-conversion locations.
Both the well and source locations are plotted. The T-wave image
complements the reflected upgoing P-wave image.
Figure 11 shows an offset VSP obtained from a highly deviated
well. Figure 11a is the perpendicular component after rotation to en-
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hance the T- and upgoing P-waves. Figure 11b and 11c shows the
downgoing T-wave and upgoing P-wave after separating downgoing
and upgoing waves in Figure 11a. The final image produced by the
reverse-time migration of the T-waves is shown in Figure 12. The
well trajectory is shown as a solid heavy curve. Downhole geophon-
es were deployed along the deviated part only. Well-log velocities V p
and Vs and major geological horizon tops indicated from A to H are
plotted on the right side of the figure. There is a reasonable correla-
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tion between the T-wave mapped image and the geological tops at
the target zone. The T-wave image clearly provides good coverage
above the deviated well where reflected P- and C-waves cannot
illuminate.
Figure 12. T-wave migration image of an offset VSP data set in the
deviated well shown in Figure 11b. Log P- and S-wave velocity
Figure 11. Example of deviated-well offset VSP data. a Raw data curves are plotted on the right side for correlation. Major geologic
after rotation to emphasize T- and reflected upgoing P-waves. b tops are marked from A to H, and well trajectory is plotted as the sol-
T-wave. c Reflected upgoing P-wave. id curve at the bottom.
Transmitted PS-wave imaging S249
CONCLUSION trace of all possible conversion points for T- and C-waves, shaped
like an egg Figure A-1.
We have illustrated the use of transmitted converted waves The normal direction gradient vector at any conversion point is
T-waves for imaging regions above receivers in VSP experiments
that cannot be imaged by reflected waves. Three T-wave imaging
techniques depth-domain moveout correction, CDP mapping, Vnx,y = T T
,
x y
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and migration have been described. In particular, we have demon-
strated the use of T-waves for imaging areas above highly deviated x x1 x x2
= + ,
vsx x22 + y 2
or horizontal boreholes, a region not imaged by reflection data. With
v p x x1 + y 2 2
synthetic and field data examples, we have shown that more com-
plete images of the subsurface are obtained by combining the con-
ventional reflected wave image and the T-wave image. All of these y
v p x x1 + y 2 2
+
y
vsx x22 + y 2
benefits are obtained without extra cost in data acquisition, so we be-
lieve this method will become widely used in the oil industry.
=
x x1 x x2
v pr 1
+
v sr 2
,
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors thank Chris Liner for his technical insights and valu-
y
+
y
v p 1 v sr 2
r
, A-2
able discussions. Thanks are extended to Panos Kelamis and Timo-
thy Keho for many helpful discussions and to Tong Fei for generat- where r1 and r2 are distances from conversion point to source and re-
ing the synthetic model. The authors are also grateful to the Saudi ceiver, respectively. The two segments of the raypath are
Arabian Oil Company for permission to publish the work.
V1x,y = x x1,y,
APPENDIX A V2x,y = x2 x,y. A-3
OBEYS SNELLS LAW
x x1 x x2
For simplicity, we show a 2D diagram and place the source and re- V1 Vn = x x1,y,0 + ,
v pr 1 v sr 2
ceiver on the x-axis. Figure A-1 depicts a raypath for the T-wave.
The P-wave starts from source location x1,0 to conversion point y y
x,y at a speed V p, converts to an S-wave, and travels to receiver + ,0
v pr 1 v sr 2
point x2,0 at a speed Vs. The total traveltime along the raypath is the
sum of two segments:
x x12 + y2 x x22 + y2
= 0,0,x x1 y
v pr 1
+
y
v sr 2
Tx,y =
vp
+
vs
. A-1
y x x1 x x2
v pr 1
+
v sr 2
When total traveltime T is constant, the migration operator is the
yx2 x1
= 0,0, . A-4
v sr 2
Similarly,
V2 Vn = 0,0,
yx2 x1
v pr 1
. A-5
Recall that for any two vectors, the length of a cross product is
V1 V2 = V1 V2 sin ,
1 and V 2. From equations A-4 andA-5,
where is the angle between V
we have
Figure A-1. The migration operator for T- and C-waves is a de- sin 1 V1 Vn yx2 x1
formed ellipse like an eggshell. The P-wave travels from source = = A-6
x1,0 to conversion point x,y at a speed V p, converts to an S-wave, vp v pV1 Vn v pvsr1r2Vn
and travels to receiver x2,0. The raypath obeys Snells law for
transmission and reflection waves. and
S250 Luo et al.
V2 Vn
ference modeling and migration by flux corrected transport: Geophysics,
sin 2 yx2 x1 60, 18301842.
= = . A-7 Gaiser, J. E., J. P. DiSiena, and K. J. McCoole, 1983, Deviated borehole VSP:
vs vsV2 Vn v pvsr1r2Vn Offset reflection point mapping: 53rd Annual International Meeting, SEG,
Expanded Abstracts, 530533.
Obviously, equations A-6 and A-7 are equal, that is, Hardage, B. A., 2000, Vertical seismic profiling: Principles, 3rd ed.: Perga-
mon Press, Inc.
sin 1 sin 2 Jiang, Z., J. Yu, G. Schuster, and B. Hornby, 2005, Migration of multiples:
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