Passive seismic imaging without velocity model prior to imaging

Abstract

There are two types of passive seismic monitoring: down-hole and surface monitoring. In this paper, we introduce a new surface monitoring technique that does not require trigger time and any seismic velocity information prior to imaging. Therefore, this technique can be considered as a velocity independent monitoring technique. We have calculated the radius ot the curvature of the propagated wave-front from the passive source to the receivers deployed on the surface. The passive source coordinates are expressed in terms of the curvature. Computational experiments with synthetic data examples confirm the theoretical expectations and demonstrate the practical feasibility of the proposed technique.