Seismic data regularization for marine wide azimuth data

Imaging subsalt structures under the complex overburdens is a challenging task in seismic exploration due to the poor illumination of seismic waves. To solve the illumination problem, geophysicists designed the wide azimuth acquisition. Moreover, WAZ acquisition improves the signal to noise ratio by increasing the azimuthal fold, and reduces multiple interferences in the final images (Etgen, 2006). On the other hand, geophysicists have improved the prestack depth imaging technology to take advantages of the new acquisition geometry. For example, the 3D SRME algorithm was generalized to process the wide azimuth data (Lin et al., 2005), TTI model building techniques were also adapted to it (Huang et al., 2008) and TTI reverse time migration has been developed to incorporate the azimuthal information into depth imaging (Zhang and Zhang, 2008). These recently developed technologies can significantly improve the capabilities of imaging the complex structures in the subsalt area. However, most of these new developments require regularly sampled seismic data as input, with a dense sampling rate (without aliasing) in all spatial directions, including inline, crossline, offset. Due to the surface condition, the actual real seismic data are rarely acquired on such a required regular grid.