Multichannel blind deconvolution of seismic signals

Abstract

A new algorithm for simultaneous wavelet estimation and deconvolution of seismic reflection signals is given. To remove the inherent ambiguity in this blind deconvolution problem, we introduce relevant a priori information. Our major assumption is sparseness of the reflectivity, which corresponds to a layered‐earth model. This allows nonminimum‐phase wavelets to be recovered reliably and closely spaced reflectors to be resolved. To combine a priori knowledge and data, we use a Bayesian framework and derive a maximum a posteriori estimate. Computing this estimate is a difficult optimization problem solved by a suboptimal iterative procedure. The procedure alternates steps of wavelet estimation and reflectivity estimation. The first step only requires a simple least‐squares fit, while the second step is solved by the iterated window maximization algorithm proposed by Kaaresen. This enables better efficiency and optimality than established alternatives. The resulting optimization method can easily handle multichannel models with only a moderate increase of the computational load. Lateral continuity of the reflectors is achieved by modeling local dependencies between neighboring traces. Major improvements in both wavelet and reflectivity estimates are obtained by taking the wavelet to be invariant across several traces. The practicality of the algorithm is demonstrated on synthetic and real seismic data. An application to multivariate well‐log segmentation is also given.