Broadband seismic by means of dispersed source arrays

Seismic sources deployed during a particular survey are historically chosen to be equal. However, from a physical point of view the constraint of using only identical source units is not required. We suggest to abandon this constraint and to replace, or reinforce, traditional broadband sources with narrower-band devices, together representing a Dispersed Source Array (DSA). Operational flexibility and acoustic energy transmission efficiency are expected to considerably improve. In addition, the DSA concept opens the possibility to choose tow depths and spatial sampling intervals that are optimum for specific sources (bandwidths). The ensemble of sources incorporated in the array is designed to cover the entire temporal and spatial bandwidth of interest.Geoscience & EngineeringCivil Engineering and Geoscience