Free-surface multiple attenuation using inverse data processing in the coupled plane-wave domain

Abstract

Free-surface multiples contain a large amount of energy in the seismic data because of large reflectivity of the free surface. We propose a method for free-surface multiple attenuation by a simple muting in the inverse coupled plane-wave domain. Our method is based on inverse data processing and the well-known 2D invariant embedding technique. If the lateral variation in subsurface structure is smooth, the data are well compressed in the 2D coupled plane-wave domain, reducing computation costs and stabilizing the inversion procedure. Surface multiples and primaries are well separated in the inverse coupled plane-wave domain, and multiples can be eliminated by simple muting, which does not damage the primary energy. To reduce artifacts, wraparound, and noise introduced by the frequency-domain data matrix inversion, horizontal and vertical tapers are applied. A least-squares matrix inversion method is chosen to stabilize the inversion. Synthetic data examples show that plane-wave inverse data processing is stable and successful in attenuating free-surface multiples.