Velocity determination in layered systems with arbitrarily curved interfaces by means of wave field extrapolation of CMP data

Abstract

The paper starts with a brief review of conventional velocity determination procedures for plane‐layered systems. These methods assume hyperbolic moveout curves in common midpoint (CMP) data. It is shown that in layered systems with arbitrarily curved interfaces these methods fail since the moveout curves are nonhyperbolic. The subject of this paper is a wave‐theoretical approach to velocity determination. By means of wave field extrapolation of CMP data, nonhyperbolic moveout curves are transformed into hyperbolic ones. The proposed process is called velocity replacement (VR) since an inhomogeneous overburden is replaced by a homogeneous velocity medium. The effect of VR is illustrated on synthetic data. From the results it may be concluded that velocity determination after VR yields significantly more accurate results than velocity determination before VR. The technique of VR is also proposed as a preprocessing tool prior to stack in situations of nonhyperbolic moveout curves.