3D Super-virtual Refraction Interferometry

Abstract

We present the theory and practice of 3D supervirtual interferometry (SVI) for enhancing the signal-to-noise ratio of refraction arrivals in 3D data. Unlike 2D SVI, 3D SVI requires an extra integration along the inline direction to compute the stationary source-receiver pairs for enhanced stacking of the refraction events. The result is a significant increase in the signal-to-noise ratio of first arrivals in the far-offset traces. Both 3D synthetic and field data examples are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. For the synthetic data tests, SVI extended the source-receiver offset range of pickable traces from 11 km to 15 km. In the field data example, SVI extended the source-receiver offset of traces with pickable first-arrival traveltimes from 12 km to a maximum of 18 km, and the total number of reliable traveltime picks was increased by 12%, which contributed to a deeper velocity update in the traveltime tomogram.