NON‐LINEAR ESTIMATION OF REFLECTION COEFFICIENTS FROM SEISMIC DATA*

For years, reflection coefficients have been the main aim of traditional deconvolution methods for their significant informational content.

A method to estimate seismic reflection coefficients has been derived by searching for their amplitude and their time positions without any other limitating assumption. The input data have to satisfy certain quality constraints like amplitude and almost zero phase noise—ghosts, reverberations, long period multiples, and diffracted waves should be rejected by traditional processing. The proposed algorithm minimizes a functional of the difference between the spectra of trace and reflectivity in the frequency domain. The estimation of reflection coefficients together with the consistent “wavelet’ is reached iteratively with a multidimensional Newton‐Raphson technique. The residual error trace shows the behavior of the process. Several advantages are then obtainable from these reflection coefficients, like conversion to interval velocities with an optimum calibration either to the well logs or to the velocity analysis curves. The procedure can be applied for detailed stratigraphic interpretations or to improve the resolution of a conventional velocity analysis.