CGGVeritas: What is Wide Azimuth (WAZ)? http://www.cggveritas.com/default.aspx?

cid=1833&lang=1



 
 

 
 




 

Home > Products & Services > Wide Azimuth > What is WAZ?

What is Wide Azimuth (WAZ)?

Contacts:
Conventional 3D marine acquisition records a limited subset of the reflected wavefield because of its
Americas
narrow range of source-receiver azimuths. This method of recording just a small percentage of the Send E-Mail
total wavefield provides limited illumination and resolution.
Asia-Pacific
On the other hand, land and seabed acquisition have sometimes used wide-azimuth geometries but Send E-Mail
only at the expense of large spacing of either shots or receivers, or both. This coarse sampling can lead
Europe, Africa & Middle
to an aliased representation of the wavefield and hence noisy and misleading images of the earth. East
Send E-Mail
To achieve an optimum image of the sub-surface, we need both wide-azimuth recording and
sufficiently dense sampling to obtain a full representation of the seismic wavefield. In the marine
environment, CGGVeritas' Wide Azimuth (WAZ) recording provides this by using a wide array of
receivers for every shotpoint; for land and seabed surveys, our technology provides dense shotpoint
sampling designed to sample the wavefield adequately. A good analogy is the use of very large arrays
for radio telescopes that give unparalleled, high-resolution images of outer space.

Benefits:

More accurate imaging of the sub-surface

Improved signal-to-noise ratio
Improved fracture and reservoir characterization

Think of the shot as analogous to dropping a stone into a pond. The waves propagate outwards in all directions and if we
want to record the whole wavefield adequately we must have receivers over the entire area. Conventional 3D surveys
record only a narrow off-end swath (illustrated by the yellow box above). This is a poor representation of the wavefield,
typically sampling only about 5-10% of the total energy from the sub-surface.

July 11, 2010 | © CGGVeritas 2010 | Legal Notice

1 of 1 7/11/2010 10:29 PM