Whats New in OBN Imaging at EAGE 2020?

The source and wavefield spatial sampling of towed streamer acquisition exceeds that of Ocean Bottom Node (OBN) and Ocean Bottom Cable (OBC) acquisition, and the survey costs are considerably less. Nevertheless, the decoupled source and receiver locations, the flexibility of OBN deployment in certain environments, and the growing industry focus upon very low frequency signals and very long offsets for FWI applications are motivating a growing market for OBN. After reviewing some recent developments in the application of Full Wavefield Migration (FWM) and Least-Squares Migration (LSM) of OBN and OBC data, I share a rather contrary perspective on receiver-side spatial sampling, and note how FWM can exploit the decoupled nature of OBN receivers, and may enable sparser (and lower cost) acquisition than is typical. This consideration of sparse and/or irregular OBN acquisition geometry leads to a brief overview of several presentations that address the acoustic imaging of OBN data at the upcoming virtual EAGE conference in December.