Hydrophone-only receiver deghosting using a variable sea surface datum

Receiver deghosting algorithms assuming a flat sea surface may be sub-optimal in the case of significant sea surface datum variations. We propose a method that begins by using the seismic data to calculate a sea surface profile. The sea surface profile is then provided to a modified linear Radon inversion scheme to model the receiver ghost. We compare receiver deghosting results using a flat sea surface datum and a variable sea surface datum on a marine dataset acquired in the North Sea. We show that receiver deghosting using a variable sea surface may improve wavefield separation; specifically, the clarity of the shallow reflectors is improved at the higher frequencies.