Effects of averaging and sampling on the statistics of reflection coefficients

Abstract

The reflection coefficients derived from sonic and density logs are frequently used in seismic exploration. Even though they measure the in‐situ formation slowness and density, sonic and density tools do not measure the exact, continuous formation properties but locally averaged properties sampled at discrete depth points. Furthermore, the logs are frequently reinterpolated to form a Goupillaud medium for many applications such as synthetic seismogram computation. Both the logging tools and the Goupillaud interpolation introduce averaging and sampling effects into the reflection coefficients and significantly alter the autocorrelation of the reflection coefficient sequence. Analytical formulas are derived to show how the autocorrelation is altered and to calculate how the autocorrelation depends on the averaging and sampling intervals. Essentially, these effects impose sincsquared envelopes on the power spectrum of the reflection coefficient sequence and alias high‐frequency components to low‐frequency components in the spectral domain. These findings are verified using synthetic and real examples.