Key elements of total seismic field design using Mathematica—A tutorial

Abstract

This tutorial reviews the basics of total seismic field design and provides personal‐computer–based computer language codes that can readily be used, with some modification, to design seismic surveys in the field. The finite effective dynamic range of seismic recording systems together with an overlap of signal and noise spectra suggest that a certain amount of prefiltering is needed during the acquisition phase to insure that a weak signal does not fall below the system noise, which would render the signal useless. The key elements of a total seismic field design are reviewed and, by way of a hypothetical 3‐D field example, their implementation is illustrated. The recommended solution consists of parameters for spread geometry that will record maximum geologic dips without aliasing, and shot and receiver arrays that optimize the signal‐to‐noise ratio.