Abstract: According to one embodiment, a near-field data is used to determine a taper length that can isolate the source signature at the top of near-field data with minimum interaction with the Green's function. In some embodiments, a range of taper lengths is selected and for each length after tapering the near-filed data, converting each filtered near-field data to its minimum-phase equivalents. Summing pairwise cross-correlation of all of the minimum-phase equivalent wavelets at the zero-lag provides an attribute that shows how much the tapered portions of the near-field data look alike. An acceptable taper size will be the one that has the highest summation value. Finally, the average of the minimum-phase equivalents of tapered near-field data with the selected taper size is the estimated source signature.