WAVE-EQUATION MULTIPLE SUPPRESSION USING CONSTRAINED GROSS-EQUALIZATION1

A method for improving the attenuation of water-layer multiple energy is suggested. The improvement is achieved using wave-equation extrapolation to generate an initial model of the multiple energy, and then constraining the way in which this model is modified to fit the observed multiple energy. Reconciling the initial multiple model with the input data is a critical part of this process and several techniques have been suggested previously by other authors. The approach used here is to fit the time, amplitude and phase of the wavelets by adapting the initial model trace using a weighted sum of four traces which can each be derived from the initial multiple model trace. Results on real data suggest that attenuation of primary energy is minimized using this technique, without diminishing the level of multiple attenuation.