Potential risks of spectrum whitening deconvolution — Compared with well-driven deconvolution

Abstract

Deconvolution is widely used to increase the resolution of seismic data. To compare the resolution ability of conventional spectrum whitening deconvolution to thin layers with that of welldriven deconvolution, a complex sedimentary geological model was designed, and then the simulated seismic data were processed respectively by each of the two methods. The amplitude spectrum of seismic data was almost white after spectrum whitening, but the wavelet resolution was low. The amplitude spectrum after well-driven deconvolution deviated from white spectrum, but the wavelet resolution was high. Further analysis showed that if an actual refl ectivity series could not well satisfy the hypothesis of white spectrum, spectrum whitening deconvolution had a potential risk of wavelet distortion, which might lead to a pitfall in high resolution seismic data interpretation. On the other hand, the wavelet after welldriven deconvolution had higher resolution both in the time and frequency domains. It is favorable for high resolution seismic interpretation and reservoir prediction.

Robust one-step (deconvolution + integration) seismic inversion in the frequency domain

“…Regularization operator can be used for frequency band filtering. Note that the whitening operation can only be used if the wavelet is unknown due to a lot of assumptions (Li et al, 2009).…”