Уear of publication: 2024

This study revisits the role of receiver arrays in environments with small-scale high-contrast near-surface heterogeneities, focusing on their capacity to manage speckle scattering noise based on a new random multiplicative noise model. Our analysis reveals that array stacking significantly mitigates this type of noise. By statistically modeling scattering noise, we establish formulas for the average phase and amplitude, alongside their variability, as functions of array size. We demonstrate that the standard deviation of phase disturbances decreases in proportion to 1/√N, highlighting the effectiveness of evensmall, 9-receiver arrays in reducing this type of noise. Additionally, array stacking makes amplitude data more uniform and stable. Our conclusions are supported by simulations employing a speckle model for scattering noise and by elastic finite-difference modeling that accounts for meter-scale geological variations. This research sheds light on the evolution of seismic acquisition techniques in desert terrains, transitioning from larger to smaller arrays, and suggests new directions for acquisition strategies to address speckle scattering noise, offering practical implications for future seismic data processing.