Reverse Time Migration of up and down going signal for ocean bottom data

Abstract:

We present the results of reverse time migration (RTM) on ocean-bottom data as a precursor to applying reverse time migration and inversion of multi-component ocean-bottom data using the two-way acoustic wave-equation. We propose a joint-inversion scheme that constructively combines up- and down-going migration results and removes spurious artifacts in the final image. Reverse time migration of up-going data gives stronger reflector amplitude and weaker artifacts than migration of down-going data; however, due to mirror-imaging, the area of sub-surface illumination is narrower when using up-going energy. In addition, we observe that a new class of artifacts is present due to RTM injection of receiver wavefields with the ocean bottom geometry.