Averaging and Lateral Resolution for Continuous TEM Methods

For continuous methods there is a trade-off between lateral resolution and the size of the data stack, or average width. A narrow average (small stack) results in a high lateral resolution, a wide average (large stack) results in a better signal-to-noise ratio but reduces the lateral resolution. We present inversion results of synthetic TEM-data with different averaging widths to explore the influence on the lateral resolution. The study shows that for the deeper parts of the model it is possible to use a very large average width without loosing lateral resolution. Averaging airborne data adds another issue, because the data entering the average interval originates from different flight altitudes (aircraft movement). The question is whether the error introduced by assigning the average flight altitude to the average dataset is acceptable? This is relevant because the altitude enters the inversion scheme as a fixed or strongly constrained parameter. We show that a linear correlation between altitude and data response for TEM-data exist. Due to the linearity the error introduced by using average data with the average altitude is very small. In the worst case, the error is 3% and negligible for the late time gates.