Passive reflective imaging for visualizing subsurface structures in earth and water

摘要

A system and method is provided that uses signals from a plurality of seismic sensors to define an acoustic lens for subsurface imaging. More specifically signals provided by an array of sensors/geophones may be utilized to form an acoustic lens that can be focused on a subterranean point by properly adjusting the signals recorded at each sensor prior to summation of those signals. To form such an acoustic lens, each of the seismic sensors is moved onto a hypothetical acoustic lens surface (e.g., spherical surface) having a focal point located on the subterranean point of interest in order to calculate a time delay for each signal. Once the signals for each sensor is time-delayed, information in the time-delayed signals, which is received from the point of interest, may be temporally aligned. Accordingly, the time delayed signals may be combined to generate reflection information for the point of interest.