Multisensor Fusion Positioning for Marine Towed Streamers: Modeling, Evaluation, and Comparison

Towed streamer positioning is a critical step in marine seismic surveys, and the positioning accuracy of streamers directly affects the quality and reliability of seismic imaging. However, when existing streamer positioning algorithms are applied to modern multistreamer surveys, the positioning accuracy can be limited by imperfections in the positioning model. In addition, a comprehensive evaluation and comparison for streamer positioning algorithms is not established yet due to the lack of a benchmark. In this article, we propose two analytical positioning models in the least-squares (LS) framework to fusing compass and acoustic sensors in a tightly coupled form for multistreamer positioning, and for the first time, the performance of different streamer positioning methods and models is fully evaluated and compared using both simulation and real-world data. First, the polynomial curve streamer positioning model is improved by cubic splines for segmented fitting, which is a modeling on coordinates (MOC) model. Second, a curve integration model for multistreamer positioning is proposed, which is a modeling on shape (MOS) model. Furthermore, these two proposed positioning models, along with the polynomial curve model and numerical method, are evaluated and compared based on the six-streamer simulation data and ten-streamer real-world data. The results demonstrate better robustness and adaptability of the proposed positioning models, and compared with the MOC model, the MOS model achieves better positioning performance with fewer parameters.