High resolution microseismic source collocation

Microseismic waves generated by hydraulic fracturing are used to locate the fractures created in the reservoir. Most of the existing source collocation methods have their limitations in terms of resolution of very closely spaced microseismic events. In this work we propose a method to collocate microseismic events with high resolution along with simultaneous estimation of source time function. In the context of waves, the finite-difference modelling operator acts as an analysis operator for wavefields. This implies that wavefields under the action of a finite-difference modelling kernel can be focused to sources generating these wavefields. We exploit this property of wavefields to locate microseismic events and estimate the source time function jointly. To arrive at a computational feasible scheme, we use the accelerated version of Linearized Bregman (LBR) algorithm to solve the above mentioned problem. This is joint work with Rongrong Wang.

https://slim.gatech.edu/Publications/Public/Conferences/SINBAD/2016/Fall...