Efficient Harmonic-Distortion Mitigation on Vibro-Seismic Sources

In seismic land acquisition, harmonic–noise in vibrator ground-force has always been a major limitation in terms of data quality and productivity. In high productivity acquisition, vibrator distortion is usually prevented by waiting enough time between successive shots. Otherwise, it has to be reduced during seismic data processing. The low-dwell sweeps that are now currently used in production can induce even more important distortion issues. Harmonics from low frequency content can be considerably more spread out over time after correlation. Consequently, the extensive use of the low-frequency bandwidth for vibro-seismic sources prompted the need for improved distortion control, especially at low frequency. This paper describes a method to mitigate the harmonic distortion directly before emission. The output noise is measured and injected adaptively with opposite phase in the source input to converge towards an ideal output. The results show important noise reduction over the full bandwidth, with perfect low-frequency fidelity. A better source signal quality provides better seismic data that is easier to process, and opens new possibilities in terms of acquisition scenarios with possible productivity improvement.