OPTIMIZATION AND IMPLEMENTATION OF MARINE SEISMIC ARRAYS?

The objective in array design is the rejection of bands of wavelengths which contain noise. In marine exploration, where the coupling between receiver element and water does not vary sig-nificantly along the array, element gains can be chosen to maximize this rejection. For a fixed number of elements and no limitations on array length, a Chebyshev array results. The solution to the more relevant problem of a fixed length array with a variable number of elements is pre-sented here. Upon implementation, element gains cannot be realized exactly, but only to 1 % ithin a specified tolerance. Corresponding to this specified toler-ance, an array design procedure lnesented in this paper provides the best possible array. Naturally, the smaller the tolerance, the better the array. Ex-amples of various array designs arc compared for gain tolerances of one percent and five percent; the effect of inexact placement of the array ele-ments is also considered