BLISS: Blind Identification of Seismic Signals
Principal Investigator: Dr Mirko van der Baan
Co investigators: Christian Jutten, Jerome Mars & Dinh-Tuan Pham (Grenoble, France)
Summary
Mission statement
The project on BLind Identification of Seismic Signals (BLISS) is an international collaboration between the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds, UK, and the Laboratoire des Images et des Signaux at the Grenoble Institute of Technology in France. It reunites geophysicists and experts in statistics and signal processing. Its principal objective is to identify state-of-the-art technologies in the field of advanced signal processing that are hitherto largely ignored by the geophysical community but carry promise for a step-change in current seismic processing algorithms.
Focus and Achievements
The two main pillars of phase 1 are independent component analysis (ICA) and blind deconvolution. ICA separates a set of observations into the statistically most independent signals. The aim of blind deconvolution is to deconvolve the unknown wavelet from the recorded data without prior knowledge about either its shape or phase. Phase 1 has led to novel blind deconvolution criteria for noisy bandlimited data, new wavelet estimation techniques, and ICA-based techniques for (i) pre- and post-stack data enhancement, (ii) blind PP/PS wavefield separation in 3-component surface seismics, and (iii) up/down wavefield separation in VSP data with irregular acquisition geometries.
Phase 2 will continue to work on the topics of ICA and blind deconvolution and add a third pillar, namely Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD). This is a novel data-driven technique highly suited for analyzing nonstationary signals. It is often combined with the Hilbert transform to compute analytic signals. EMD offers interesting new avenues for (i) attribute analysis and (ii) signal extraction + processing.
The BLISS consortium focuses on identification and modification of advanced signal processing methodologies that represent promising new avenues to increase the signal-to-noise ratio of seismic data and thereby their resolution. An enhanced resolution is critical for successful exploration of in particular new satellite fields in mature areas such as the North Sea and to improve confidence in volume estimates, well targets and production profiles in general.