Computing Angle Gathers From Imaging of Multiples Using a Poynting Vector Method for Improving Angular Illumination

In marine exploration, conventional migration algorithms based on primary reflections often have poor angular illumination, especially in shallow areas and complex salt boundaries. Source density is the primary controller of angular illumination. It is well-known that source density is relatively sparse in a typical marine seismic acquisition, such as in a towed streamer survey. In contrast, imaging of multiples treats each receiver as a virtual source, mimicking a high-density source survey. Imaging of multiples can provide additional angular illumination and help to improve subsurface imaging. The extra illumination provided by multiple reflections enhances angle-domain common-image gathers (ADCIGs), a component of velocity model building and amplitude versus angle (AVA) analysis. Our main objective is to illustrate the advantages of angular illumination from imaging of multiples in the angular domain. To achieve this purpose, we propose a workflow for calculating high-quality ADCIGs for imaging of multiples. The workflow mainly contains up-going and down-going wavefield decomposition and the stabilized Poynting vectors for calculating more accurate imaging angles. To illustrate the accuracy of the proposed workflow, a simple model is used to calculate angle gathers for imaging of multiples. Then, the Sigsbee 2B model and a field dataset from the Gulf of Mexico are used to compute angle gathers by imaging primaries and multiples to demonstrate the improved angular illumination achieved when multiples are also used for imaging. The comparison results show that the angle gathers obtained by imaging of multiple has better angular illumination, especially in shallow areas and complex salt boundaries.