SPECTRA OF WATER REVERBERATIONS FOR PRIMARY AND MULTIPLE REFLECTIONS

Abstract

A theoretical study shows that passage of a seismic event through the water‐layer filter imposes amplitude characteristics on the resultant reverberating event which are independent of whether the event is a primary reflection or a multiple reflection. The phase characteristics of each order of event are, however, different. It is also shown that the reverberating sequence from a multiple reflection can be “whitened” by deconvolution but will still exhibit ringing. This phenomenon explains why some marine data, containing dominantly multiple reflections, are not amenable to deringing using standard deconvolution approaches. In addition, a quick method of obtaining the approximate reflection coefficient of the sea floor is derived.