REMOVAL OF GUIDED-WAVES FROM SEISMIC DATA IN LATERALLY VARYING MEDIA

A major source of unwanted signals in seismic data recorded for geophy sical exploration is the presence of guided waves which are scattered near the surface of the earth. These waves do not contain information on the structure of the deeper subsurface and should therefore be remo ved. In this paper we derive a method for removing this type of waves based on a modal expansion. The problem of finding an appropriate scat terer distribution is formulated as a minimization problem. We apply t he method to simulated data and watertank data, and find that the scat tered guided waves are strongly attenuated and that the reflections of interest (from deeper layers) are not affected. (C) 1998 Elsevier Sci ence B.V. All rights reserved.