Improving Seismic Resolution with Nonstationary Deconvolution

Alana R. Schoepp

Nonstationary deconvolution operators can be designed directly from the seismic data and applied to the data using nonstationary filtering techniques. Such operators can be continuously time-variant and have any desired amplitude or phase spectra. The operator design uses time-variant Fourier spectra measured directly from the seismic data, which are smoothed, inverted and combined with a minimum-phase spectrum, if desired. This method of nonstationary deconvolution (NSD) approximately corrects the seismic data for the effects of anelastic attenuation, frequency dispersion, and source signature. The result is a one-dimensional nonstationary operation that the range of stationary deconvolution to a type of data-driven inverse-Q filter.

NSD has been applied to real seismic data and the results have been compared to results from Wiener deconvolution and inverse-Q filtering. The datasets deconvolved with NSD show improved vertical resolution and improved reflection character as compared to results from the other methods.