The Use of Attributes Matching for PP- and PS-wave Event Registration

PP- and PS-wave event registration is one of the “bottlenecks” that limit the application of the multicomponent seismic data. Most existing methods for event registration assume that the PP- and PS-waves have similar waveforms, directly correlating the PP- and PS-wave stacked or migrated sections for registration purposes. Here, we propose an indirect matching method based on prestack inversion. Using prestack inversion, we can obtain shear-wave (S-wave) information from both PP- and PS-waves, which makes it possible to perform a “like-by-like” comparison during event registration. To implement this approach, we design a prestack PP inversion scheme, generating a “pseudo PS-wave” (PPS) section in PP time which shows good similarity to the recorded PS-waveforms in PS time. Both numerical modeling and real data are used to illustrate this work flow with improved waveform similarity and accuracy in event registration. Therefore, we argue that attributes matching with prestack PP-wave inversion may provide an alternative and better approach to PP- and PS-wave event registration.