CMP SORTING

The seismic data is usually recorded in multifold coverage geometry to improve the signal to noise ratio. The natural domain for field acquisition is the shot-receiver; Figure 1 shows a schematic representation of the recording geometry. After demultiplexing the data is sorted by channel or shot-receiver trace as described in previous chapters. The next step is to convert the data from shot-receiver to common mid point domain (Figure 2); this process is called CMP sorting. During the CMP, sorting traces with the same Midpoint coordinates are grouped. This trace group is called CMP gather. In order to perform the CMP sorting the processor should know the acquisition geometry and source-receiver coordinates. With this information midpoint, coordinates for each trace are calculated. Finally, the traces are resorted to group the traces with the same midpoint coordinates. The multifold acquisition technique or CMP technique has many advantages. First, the redundancy is the best tool for random to noise attenuation. Second, CMP is an effective domain for velocity analysis; and third it is an effective tool for multiples suppression.

Figure 1

Figure 2

CMP STACKING
To the Observer, the physical reality in the field is the spread, and the display which expresses that reality is the field record (Figure 1 <>: Comparing a shot and a cmp gather).

Figure 1 Frame a shows the physical realities of the spread and the field record. To the processor, these realities must be converted, early in the processing, into the common-midpoint family and the gather. Frame b shows the more artificial concept of the gather. In part, this conversion is desirable merely to ease the mechanics of the processing. Even before we tackle the details (in the module on Velocities), however, we can see from Figure 2 (The effect of dip on the illustrations of the previous graphic) that there is a more powerful reason also.

This reason is concerned with the measurement of normal moveout (which we remember is necessary before the normal moveout can be subtracted in the process of nmo correction). Figure 2 contrasts with Figure 1 (Comparing shot and CMP gathers) in that the reflector is dipping. Whereas in Figure 1 , the reflection alignments on the record and the gather are identical, in Figure 2 they are not. If we knew in advance that the reflector was plane and horizontal, we could measure the normal moveout as well on the field record as on the gather. But we do not know this, and in the presence of dip the reflection alignment on the field gather may be regarded as the nmo hyperbola rotated by the dip (Frame a of Figure 2). To measure the normal moveout, therefore, we must find some way of separating the effect of dip from the effect of increasing offset. We have learned, however, that the common midpoint gather (Figure 2b ) is very tolerant of dip; in particular, the reflection alignment remains substantially a hyperbola. Frame b of the graphic shows that on the gather, the effect of dip is minor, and the normal move-out can be determined without change of technique. This eases the problems of determining normal moveout in the presence of dip; however, some problems remain, but they are much less than if we tried to measure the normal moveout on field records. Applying dip moveout processing to these data will further our ability to measure the true normal moveout independent of the dip of the layers. Therefore, while the field geophysicist will continue to say that the fundamental arrangement of traces is a field record, the processor will say that it is a common midpoint gather. In fact, while the common midpoint gather has become the most common gather for considering data, certain specific processing steps must be carried out in specific gathers, and some techniques, such as k-f filtering, can be most effective if applied sequentially in two orthogonal domains, such as common shot and receiver gathers, or in common midpoint and offset gathers (see Vermeer, 1990).

While accepting the value of the gather in allowing us to measure normal moveout, let us note that we have no conceptual need of the gather in the stacking process stacking can be viewed as the superposition of nmo-corrected field records. Thus the field geophysicist, being very comfortable with the physical reality of Figure 3 (Field geometry defining the traces to be stacked),

can see immediately that Trace 2 of Record A must be stacked with Trace 4 of Record B and Trace 6 of Record C. In Frame a of Figure 4 <>(The process of stacking viewed as a supervision of nmo-corrected field records), he marks these traces on the three records, after the application of nmo correction.

Then, if he places the records one on top of the other, as in Frame b, the traces to be summed are superposed. Adding them yields the single stacked trace of Frame c. Before the digital revolution introduced sophisticated methods for measuring normal moveout on a common midpoint gather, the process of common-midpoint stacking was performed in just the manner of Figure 4 ; gathers did not exist. Today the gathering process is valuable, and we would not be without it; conceptually, however, it is comforting to know that a stacked section is no more than an orderly superposition of field records.

NMO & DMO

Figure 1 Normal MoveOut (NMO) is a process applied to pre-stack data. Here the effect is shown on a single trace with one reflection event (left). NMO assumes the reflection comes from a horizontal interface in the earth (center). Using a velocity function supplied by the processor, NMO adjusts the original time (red) to that which would have been observed at the midpoint, marked S/R. The blue path is two-way time down and back, which must be less than the red path time. So NMOs job is to move the reflection event up the trace (right). Note NMO operates on one trace at a time, which makes it inexpensive .

Figure 2. Dip MoveOut (DMO) is a process that is applied after NMO. Since NMO assumes the reflection comes from a horizontal bed, it is picking up only one of many possibilities. For one trace with one reflection event, all possible travel paths have the same length that is, the distance from source to reflection point to receiver is a constant. The geometrical shape with this property is an ellipse (upper). Some of the original path possibilities are shown in red. NMO reduces travel time based on a horizontal reflector (blue path), while DMO does all the other cases (green). So the action of DMO (lower) is to take the NMOd event (blue) and broadcast it across several nearby traces (green). Since DMO operates on several traces, it is expensive

Figure 3.This numerical example illustrates the effect of NMO and DMO on a trace with two spikes, or reflection events. The spikes are shown on the left surrounded by a bunch of zero traces. The source and receiver locations are denoted by S and R, respectively. NMO shifts the spikes up in time, but only on the same trace (middle). DMO throws the NMOd spike amplitude out along a curve to handle all possible dips. This curve is called the DMO smile, or DMO ellipse, or DMO impulse response. Notice the DMO smile only lives between the original source and receiver positions.