Combining inter-source seismic interferometry and source-receiver interferometry for deep local imaging

The virtual source method has been applied successfully to retrieve the impulse response between pairs of receivers in the subsurface. This method is further improved by an updown separation prior to the crosscorrelation to suppress the reflections from the overburden and the free surface. In a reversed situation where the sources are in the subsurface and receivers are on the surface, in principle, one can apply the same logic to retrieve the virtual response between pairs of sources by source-receiver reciprocity, turning the physical borehole sources into virtual receivers. However, since the up-down separation is not applicable on the source side, the simple crosscorrelation of the total fields results in spurious events due to the incomplete receiver coverage around the sources. We show with a numerical example that for this configuration of borehole sources and surface receivers, one can replace such an updown separation at the source side by that of the direct and reflected waves as a first order approximation. This procedure produces the virtual receiver data that is adequate for local imaging below the source depth and is completely independent of the accuracy of the overburden velocity model. We implement this inter-source type of interferometry by multidimensional deconvolution (MDD). Further, if the conventional surface survey data is available, we test the methodology from source-receiver interferometry (SRI) for this reverse configuration with borehole sources to retrieve the virtual receiver data with reflections coming from above, using also only the separation of the direct and reflected waves. By migrating the two sets of virtual receiver data, one can create a local image around the borehole sources in a deep area with better focusing and localization without a sophisticated velocity model.