Simultaneous source separation using a robust Radon transform

Abstract

We adopted the robust Radon transform to eliminate erratic incoherent noise that arises in common receiver gathers when simultaneous source data are acquired. The proposed robust Radon transform was posed as an inverse problem using an l(1) misfit that is not sensitive to erratic noise. The latter permitted us to design Radon algorithms that are capable of eliminating incoherent noise in common receiver gathers. We also compared nonrobust and robust Radon transforms that are implemented via a quadratic (l(2)) or a sparse (l(1)) penalty term in the cost function. The results demonstrated the importance of incorporating a robust misfit functional in the Radon transform to cope with simultaneous source interferences. Synthetic and real data examples proved that the robust Radon transform produces more accurate data estimates than least- squares and sparse Radon transforms.