Geophone Coupling Corrections for Land-seismic Point Receiver Acquisition

Geophone-ground coupling variations are a longstanding problem in land seismic exploration. In this paper, we present a novel coupling correction scheme for arrays of densely spaced receivers. Our approach is based on the assumption that waveform differences between receivers within such an array can be represented by a simple model describing wave propagation differences from geophone to geophone (time shift and geometrical spreading) as well as variations in receiver coupling. Using this model, our algorithm attempts to iteratively find frequency-dependent filters that optimally compensate for the effects of varying receiver coupling. Tests on both synthetic and real data demonstrate the robustness of our approach in removing coupling differences between receivers. Several land seismic data processing techniques will benefit from data conditioning using the new method. In particular, we anticipate that the effectiveness of digital group forming techniques to remove coherent noise can be significantly enhanced.