oa A method to determine acquisition equivalency

Often a choice must be made between different acquisition schemes when designing a seismic survey. Therefore it is of interest to quantitatively compare designs in terms of the quality of data that they will produce. Such a comparison is necessarily complex, and involves many considerations that are target-specific, including data azimuth and offset distribution. However, there are certain attributes that can be calculated that are largely target-independent, and which are of fundamental importance to data quality, resolution, and final image quality. These attributes include signal bandwidth and signal-to-noise ratio. In this presentation we calculate on the basis of acquisition geometry, field effort and local conditions the signal bandwidth and signal-to-noise ratio of the acquired data, including the effects random and coherent noise. Conditions for equivalency between two crews of differing configurations are presented. Equivalency in effect permits the direct substitution of a crew of one configuration by the other crew of a different configuration with no change to signal-to-noise ratio and bandwidth. In particular this analysis permits a direct quantitative comparison between single-sensor and conventional acquisition.