What Does Sparse Really Mean Anyway? Ocean Bottom Nodes, Towed Streamers and Imaging

Towed streamer acquisition is drawing closer to the spatial sampling quality of the ideal seafloor seismic survey, and the cost of seafloor seismic continues to attract considerable debate particularly with respect to whether and how receiver spacing might be decreased to reduce cost (Sparse Ocean Bottom Nodes or Sparse OBN). The general topic of spatial sampling during marine seismic survey design is considered before some of the Least-Squares Migration (LSM) concepts introduced in the previous Industry Insights article are revisited.