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RESEARCH ARTICLE

A random layer-stripping method for seismic reflectivity inversion

Ehsan Jamali Hondori 1 3 Hitoshi Mikada 2 Tada-nori Goto 2 Junichi Takekawa 2
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1 Department of Civil and Earth Resources Engineering, Kyoto University, C1-1-119, Kyotodaigaku-Katsura, Nishikyo-ku, Kyoto, 615-8540, Japan.

2 Department of Civil and Earth Resources Engineering, Kyoto University, C1-1-112, Kyotodaigaku-Katsura, Nishikyo-ku, Kyoto, 615-8540, Japan.

3 Corresponding author. Email: jamali.ehsan.32v@st.kyoto-u.ac.jp

Exploration Geophysics 44(2) 70-76 https://doi.org/10.1071/EG13013
Submitted: 30 January 2013  Accepted: 1 February 2013   Published: 6 March 2013
Original Japanese version received 20 April 2012, accepted 12 November 2012 for Butsuri Tansa  

Abstract

Reflection coefficients and arrival times, together with seismic velocities, are significantly important for possible evaluation of reservoir properties in exploration seismology. Reflectivity inversion is one of the robust inverse techniques used to estimate layer properties by minimising misfit error between seismic data and model. On the other hand, the layer-stripping method produces subsurface images via a top-down procedure so that a given layer is modelled after all the upper layers have been inverted. In this paper, we have combined these two methods to develop a new random layer-stripping scheme which first determines the reflectivity series via a random-search algorithm and then estimates P-wave velocities. The first step can be viewed as a variant of sparse spiking deconvolution, and the second step is accomplished by considering empirical relations between density and P-wave velocity. The method has been successfully applied to Marmousi synthetic data to examine dipping reflectors and velocity gradients, and it has been found to be quite reliable for analysing complex structures. A comparison with minimum entropy deconvolution showed that our inversion algorithm gives better results in detecting the amplitudes and arrival times of seismic reflection events.

Key words: layer-stripping, reflectivity series, seismic inversion, sparse spiking deconvolution.


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