Weighted-elastic-wave interferometric imaging of microseismic source location

Abstract

Knowledge of the locations of seismic sources is critical for microseismic monitoring. Time-window-based elastic wave interferometric imaging and weightedelastic-wave (WEW) interferometric imaging are proposed and used to locate modeled microseismic sources. The proposed method improves the precision and eliminates artifacts in location profi les. Numerical experiments based on a horizontally layered isotropic medium have shown that the method offers the following advantages: It can deal with low-SNR microseismic data with velocity perturbations as well as relatively sparse receivers and still maintain relatively high precision despite the errors in the velocity model. Furthermore, it is more efficient than conventional traveltime inversion methods because interferometric imaging does not require traveltime picking. Numerical results using a 2D fault model have also suggested that the weighted-elastic-wave interferometric imaging can locate multiple sources with higher location precision than the time-reverse imaging method.

Recent Advances and Challenges of Waveform‐Based Seismic Location Methods at Multiple Scales

“…Another well‐established and interferometric‐type migration operator for source location is the cross‐correlation stacking (Schuster et al, ), which originated from seismic interferometric imaging and is based on differential traveltimes at pair‐wise stations from common events (Figure b; e.g., Eisner et al, ; L. Li et al, ). Instead of stacking waveforms along one‐way traveltime curves as in diffraction stacking, cross‐correlograms along differential traveltime curves are stacked taking into account the correlation among the receiver channels.…”

“…Another well-established and interferometric-type migration operator for source location is the crosscorrelation stacking (Schuster et al, 2004), which originated from seismic interferometric imaging and is based on differential traveltimes at pair-wise stations from common events (Figure 5b; e.g., Eisner et al, 2008;L. Li et al, 2015).…”

“…Cross‐correlation stacking shares the same principle of exploiting differential traveltimes at pair‐wise stations from common events, with master‐station method and station‐pair method mentioned above. This method has been applied to microseismic monitoring in the oil and gas industry (Eisner et al, ; Grandi & Oates, ; L. Li et al, ; Trojanowski & Eisner, ; Shi et al, ), volcanic tremor data (Droznin et al, ; K. L. Li et al, ; K. L. Li et al, ), mining‐induced seismicity (Dales, ; L. Li et al, ), and slow (tectonic tremor and low‐frequency earthquakes) and regular earthquake (Poiata et al, ; Ruigrok et al, ; Shi et al, ). In this study, we will call it interferometric‐type method.…”

“…Cross-correlation stacking shares the same principle of exploiting differential traveltimes at pair-wise stations from common events, with master-station method and station-pair method mentioned above. This method has been applied to microseismic monitoring in the oil and gas industry (Eisner et al, 2008;Grandi & Oates, 2009;L. Li et al, 2015;Trojanowski & Eisner, 2017;, volcanic tremor data (Droznin et al, 2015;, mining-induced seismicity (Dales, 2018;L.…”

The Underground Explosion Point Measurement Method Based on High-Precision Location of Energy Focus

“…Sava et al proposes some improvements on this method: after performing quasi-Wigner distribution function transform on the microseismic time-inverse wave field, the energy field is reconstructed using the interferometric imaging condition, which improves the energy field focusing accuracy [7]. Li et al propose a weighted elastic wave interferometric imaging method for microseismic positioning, which improves the reconstruction accuracy of the energy field [8]. As can be seen from above, researchers mainly try to improve the accuracy of source positioning by improving the reconstruction accuracy of the energy field.…”