Perfect Zerophase Sections, Fact or Fiction?

Abstract

The desired result of an optimum seismic data processing sequence is a broad band zero-phase section, i.e. a bandpassed version of the actual reflectivity function. However, a lot of socalled zerophase-sections still carry a significant phase-error, which is due to unrealistic assumptions in the processing stream in terms of the design of standard processes as for example deconvolution. The two major issues here are the color of the reflectivity series and the misuse of prewhitening. If not properly handled they lead to a phase- and amplitude spectrum bias in the final section, preventing it from being zerophase. Whereas the reflectivity bias leads to a phase error of 50 to 90 deg, the prewhitening bias results in a phase error, which is directly proportional to the logarithm of the actual prewhitening factor.

Therefore, if the spike deconvolution process is applied in a time-variant manner, as a consequence a time-variant and usually frequency dependent phase error is introduced! In this article we have made an effort to include sufficient detail to facilitate a clear understanding of the problems involved.

The standard processing flow should have a minimum-delay transform and spike deconvolution prestack, followed by a zerophase transform poststack, where the residual wavelet is assumed to be minimum phase.