[Paper Review] Exploiting Free-Surface Ghosts as Mirror Observations in Marine Seismic Data

Hitoshi Mikada|arXiv (Cornell University)|Feb 8, 2026

Seismic Imaging and Inversion Techniques0 citations

TL;DR

The paper reframes free-surface ghosts in marine seismic data as coherent mirror observations and uses a processing pipeline to align and sum primary and ghost wavefields, improving signal quality without ghost deconvolution.

ABSTRACT

Free-surface ghosts in marine seismic data are traditionally treated as artifacts that degrade bandwidth and temporal resolution and are mitigated through acquisition design or inverse filtering. This study proposes a processing-driven framework that reinterprets free-surface ghosts as coherent mirror observations rather than unwanted noise. The proposed approach exploits the deterministic relationship between primary and ghost wavefields. After decomposing the recorded data into primary and ghost components, the wavefields are physically realigned through wavefield backpropagation and survey sinking and then coherently summed. This strategy enhances signal quality without explicit inversion of the ghost operator, thereby avoiding the numerical instability inherent in inverse ghost deconvolution. Synthetic examples demonstrate that the framework improves wavelet compactness and partially recovers ghost-affected frequency content while maintaining numerical stability. The method is applicable to both source- and receiver-side ghosts and does not require modification of acquisition geometry or specialized hardware, making it particularly well suited to legacy marine seismic datasets. By shifting ghost mitigation from acquisition design to post-acquisition processing, the proposed framework provides a unifying physical interpretation of free-surface ghosts and offers a flexible pathway for broadband signal enhancement and improved signal-to-noise ratio in marine seismic data, consistent with previous field-scale observations.

Motivation & Objective

• Motivate a processing-centered reinterpretation of free-surface ghosts as coherent mirror observations rather than artifacts.
• Develop a frame to decompose recorded data into primary and ghost components and realign them physically.
• Improve waveform compactness and partially recover ghost-affected frequencies while maintaining numerical stability.

Proposed method

• Decompose recorded marine seismic data into primary and ghost components.
• Physically realign wavefields via backpropagation and survey sinking.
• Coherently sum the realigned primary and ghost fields to enhance signal quality.
• Avoid explicit inversion of the ghost operator to maintain numerical stability.
• Apply the framework to both source- and receiver-side ghosts without changing acquisition geometry.

Experimental results

Research questions

• RQ1 Can free-surface ghosts be treated as deterministic, coherent mirror observations rather than noise?
• RQ2 Does backpropagation and wavefield realignment followed by coherent summation improve signal quality and broadband content without ghost inversion?
• RQ3 Is the method applicable to both source- and receiver-side ghosts and compatible with legacy marine datasets?

Key findings

• Synthetic experiments show improved wavelet compactness after processing.
• The method partially recovers ghost-affected frequency content while remaining numerically stable.
• Ghosts are handled without modifying acquisition geometry or hardware, leveraging post-acquisition processing.