Reverse Time Migration with Low Frequency Seismic Deghosting

The ghost effect of the sea or land surface is a well-known obstacle in seismic exploration. A source ghost is an event starting its propagation upward from the source, and a receiver ghost ends its propagation moving downward at the receiver. The effect manifests as the angle dependent frequency and amplitude distortion, which leads to a reduction of both the low and high frequencies of seismic data which are required for high resolution imaging. This poor imaging result is very difficult to interpret subtle geologic features. This paper describes how we use the proposed low frequency seismic deghosting method to correct the ghost effects in a reverse time migration and provide a wide bandwidth image. Our proposed method could deghost the pressure data on a single source or receiver requires information only of the pressure and its horizontal derivatives at that source or receiver and the source’s or receiver’s depth. The method therefore can be applied to deghost pressure recordings on streamers of any shape.