Relative elastic interferometric imaging for microseismic source location

Combining a relative location method and seismic interferometric imaging, a relative elastic interferometric imaging method for microseismic source location is proposed. In the method, the information of a known event (the main event) is fully used to improve the location precision of the unknown events (the target events). First, the principles of both conventional and the relative interferometric imaging methods are analyzed. Traveltime differences from the position of the same potential event to different receivers are used in direct interferometric imaging, while relative interferometric imaging utilizes those of different events to the same receiver. Second, 2D and 3D numerical experiments demonstrate the feasibility of this newly proposed method in locating a single microseismic event. Envelopes of cross-correlation traces are utilized to eliminate the effects of changing polarities resulting from the source mechanism and receiver configuration. Finally, the location precision of the relative and conventional interferometric imaging methods are compared, and it indicates that the former hold both advantages of the relative method and interferometric imaging. Namely, it can adapt to comparatively high velocity error and low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) microseismic data. Moreover, since there is no arrival time picking and fewer cross-correlograms are imaged, the method also significantly saves computational expense. (paper)