DAS versus geophones: A quantitative comparison of a VSP survey at a dedicated field laboratory

Abstract

© 2017 European Association of Geoscientists and Engineers EAGE. All Rights Reserved. Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) is a novel technology to acquire acoustic data. DAS is noticeably promising for Vertical Seismic Profiling (VSP) applications as it offers highly sampled data, acquired simultaneously at all levels, at relatively low cost. In this study, DAS data is acquired using two different cable deployments: cemented behind the casing, and deployed suspended in the well. Both datasets were compared to conventional 3-component geophone VSP. DAS acquired with cemented cable presented similar quality and signal to noise ratio as geophone data, although it suffers from loss of high frequencies. The suspended cable presented predominantly tube noise, however reflections can still be recognized. We hope the results from this study contribute to a broader use of DAS for VSP acquisition.