System and method for refining positions of marine seismic receivers

A computing device for monitoring and adjusting recording positions of plural autonomous receiver nodes (ARNs) of a seismic survey system, the computing device comprising:

• an interface for receiving offsets between shooting positions of seismic sources and estimated recording positions of the plural ARNs;
• and
• a processor connected to the interface and configured to,
• calculate first travel-times of direct arrivals of seismic waves, based on (i) the offsets between shooting positions of seismic sources and the estimated recording positions of the plural ARNs, and (ii) a speed of the seismic waves in water,
• estimate second travel-times of the direct arrivals, based on seismic data recorded by the plural ARNs,
• estimate, in a computing device, positioning errors of one or more among the plural ARNs by applying an inversion algorithm to a misfit between the first and second travel-times of the one or more among the plural ARNs, and
• adjust the estimated recording positions of the one or more ARNs with the positioning errors to obtain updated recording positions used when processing the seismic data.

A method for adjusting trajectories of plural autonomous receiver nodes (ARNs) of a seismic survey system, the method comprising:

• calculating, in a computing device, estimated positions of the plural ARNs at time t based on ocean currents and current positions of the plural ARNs;
• applying, in the computing device, an inversion algorithm to the ocean currents to calculate inverted ocean currents;
• calculating predicted positions of the plural ARNs at a given time t based on the inverted ocean currents;
• calculating first positioning errors of the plural ARNs as a difference between the predicted positions at the given t and distances to actual positions of the ARNs measured with an acoustic system at time t;
• and
• adjusting the actual positions of the plural ARNs with the first positioning errors.