Frequency-dependent spherical-wave reflection coefficient inversion in acoustic media: Theory to practice

Abstract

As an approximation of the spherical-wave reflection coefficient (SRC), the plane-wave reflection coefficient does not fully describe the reflection phenomenon of a seismic wave generated by a point source. The applications of SRC to improve analyses of seismic data have also been studied. However, most of the studies focus on the time-domain SRC and its benefit to using the long-offset information instead of the dependency of SRC on frequency. Consequently, we have investigated and accounted for the frequency-dependent spherical-wave reflection coefficient (FSRC) and analyzed the feasibility of this type of inversion. Our inversion strategy requires a single incident angle using reflection data for inverting the density and velocity ratios, which is distinctly different from conventional inversion methods using amplitude variation with offset. Hence, this investigation provides an alternative approach for estimating media properties in some contexts, especially when the range of aperture of the reflection angles is limited. We apply the FSRC theory to the inversion of noisy synthetic and field data using a heuristic algorithm. The multirealization results of the inversion strategy are consistent with the feasibility analysis and demonstrate the potential of the outlined method for practical application.