The effect of receiver configuration and velocity perturbation on microseismic event location

Soo-Kyung Miong, Michael J. Jones, Robert R. Stewart

The sensitivity of microseismic source location-estimation on the receiver positions and velocity perturbations are examined via synthetic analyses. The results show that least location error is expected when the receivers are straddling the target formation with a greater aperture (i.e. receiver spacing of 30 m instead of 15 m for an eight-receiver array). Moreover, the effect of velocity perturbation on event location can be minimized when the most optimal receiver configuration is used. The receiver configuration with the smaller aperture tends to increase the sensitivity of the event location on velocity perturbation.