Automated target-oriented acquisition geometry optimization in marine environment

Imperfect spatial sampling causes lack of illumination at the target in the subsurface. The hampered image quality at the target area of interest can cause high uncertainties in reservoir monitoring and production, which can have a high economic impact. Especially in the case of a complex overburden, the relation between surface sampling and target illumination is not trivial. Target-oriented acquisition analysis based on wavefield propagation has been used to provide guidance for optimising the acquisition parameters. The acquisition design is usually a manual optimisation process, with consideration of many aspects. In this work, with a specific acquisition scenario, we develop a methodology that automatically optimises an irregular receiver geometry in order to obtain a good illumination of a chosen target point. With numerical examples, we demonstrate that the proposed method is effective.