Suppression of strong scattered waves using the transverse component

• Propose a new method suppressing scattered waves by using transverse component
• Assume transverse component only contains linearly polarized scattered waves
• Effectively suppress any noises as long as they satisfy the assumption

Scattered waves are commonly recorded in borehole seismic data sets. These waves must be suppressed to improve the signal-to-noise ratio of seismic reflection and transmission data. We propose a method to suppress scattered waves of the radial and vertical components by using the transverse component for the borehole seismic data. This method assumes that the transverse component only contains linearly polarized scattered waves, the radial and vertical components contain the scattered and other waves, and the scattered waves are strong in some frequency range. This method first determines the frequency range of strong scattered waves. Based on this frequency range, model data of strong scattered waves are formed by bandpass filtering the transverse component. Amplitude coefficients of scattered waves for the radial and vertical components are determined by correlating these components respectively with the transverse component in the frequency range of scattered waves. Thus, scattered waves can be estimated and suppressed from the radial and vertical components. Tests on zero-offset and walkaway VSP field data illustrate the effectiveness of this method. Comparisons show that this method can suppress strong scattered waves more effectively than the frequency-domain median filtering method. This method can be applied to suppress the noise provided that it meets the above assumptions.