Residual statics correction without NMO - A rank-based approach

Abstract

Surface-consistent residual statics correction for land seismic data does not account for the source - receiver offset. Consequently, it requires normal moveout (NMO) corrected gathers to bring raypaths close to the normal incidence. When the NMO velocity is inaccurate or unavailable, the estimated statics suffer. Therefore, multiple passes of NMO velocity picking and residual statics estimation become essential, which are efforts and time consuming. To avoid this, we utilize a rank-based solution that is capable of estimating non-surface-consistent residual statics. The method is based on the rank property of frequency slices in the midpoint-offset domain, where ideal seismic data is of low-rank nature, while data with residual statics exhibits higher rank. Accordingly, we estimate the statics that lead to the desired low-rank signal via means of low-rank approximation and cross-correlation in an iterative and multi-rank-scale approach. Since we estimate non-surface-consistent statics by accounting for the offset of each trace, it is no longer required to have NMO corrected gathers. Consequently, the method does not require windowing over a noise-free section containing primaries or windowing to avoid the NMO stretch effect, which are required by conventional residual statics correction. Numerical results on simulated and field data suggest that the method has the potential of replacing existing residual statics correction techniques.