Realtime Removal of Source Heave Effects from Marine Seismic Profiles

The performance of a high resolution seismic profiling system is adversely affected by vertical, time-varying motion (heave) of the acoustic source/receiver. Removal of heave effects from seismic records can be accomplished in real time if the source/receiver heave is measured. This, in itself, represents a technically difficult problem due to the complex motion involved and the diverse sources of sensor errors. In this paper, a new and simple method of reducing heave effects is proposed and examined. This scheme is based on the imposition of a slope limitation in the bottom trace, as observed on a "ping-to-ping" basis. The results obtained show dramatic improvement in record definition and quality. The advantage of this method over other compensating schemes is that it does not require costly heave sensors.