Time-lapse seismic survey design by maximizing the spectral gap

While time-lapse seismic has been applied successfully to CO2 sequestration monitoring, it remains a challenging problem since replicated dense surveys come at a very high cost in the field. Wavefield reconstruction based on matrix completion (MC) from randomized subsampled data is an efficient way to reduce operational costs. This technique allows for accurate time-lapse reconstruction by employing the joint recovery model (JRM), which capitalizes on the fact that different vintages share a common component. However, combining JRM with optimal time-lapse acquisition survey design remains an unexplored area of research. In expander graph theory, spectral gap (SG) reveals the source-receiver layout connectivity and is related to reconstruction quality during MC. Building on these insights, we proposed a simulation free time-lapse survey design based on JRM that aims to get similar reconstructed quality without insisting on replicate surveys, which significantly reduces the cost in the field. This approach uses the simulated annealing algorithm to find subsampling masks for each vintage. Numerical experiments confirm a direct correlation between increased spectral gap and promising time-lapse reconstruction quality.