Amplitude recovery and deconvolution of chirp and boomer data for marine geology and offshore engineering

Abstract

The processing of Chirp data is limited by the usual recording of the signal envelope, which enhances its immediate visibility but prevents applying methods based on wave equations. This is normally not the case for Boomer data. However, both systems are monochannel instruments, which cannot estimate properly the propagation velocity of the signal in the rocks. In this paper, we present two theorems: the first one links the Chirp or Boomer source spectrum with an expected amplitude decay curve; the second one defines conditions for the deconvolution stability of the enveloped Boomer signal when the full waveform of the source signal is known. In this way, we can jointly process and integrate heterogeneous surveys including both data types. We validated the proposed algorithms by applying them to synthetic and real data. The presented tools can improve the image resolution and the characterization of geological formations in marine surveys by reflectivity anomalies, which are distorted by standard equalization methods.