| Abstract: | Inversion for S-wave velocities from the amplitude variation with offset of P-wave data is far from being a standard routine in the seismic processing sequence. However, the need for tracking the amplitude versus offset (AVO) occurs in several situations, for example in order to estimate the zero-offset amplitude, to reveal areas with particular AVO characteristics, or to compress the AVO so that it is more easily obtainable at a later stage of the seismic processing. Furthermore, weak reflections can occasionally, due to the effect of the angle-dependent reflectivity, have a polarity-shift with offset, resulting in a very poor, or even vanishing, stack response. In such cases, the reflection event has to be represented by some other property than its mean amplitude or stack value. We outline how the AVO of seismic data may be extracted and classified by the use of orthogonal polynomials. The main advantage of this method compared to a general polynomial fit is that the AVO may be classified by a unique Spectrum of polynomial coefficients. This is in analogy to Fourier coefficients where the orthogonal basis is harmonic functions. The set of orthogonal polynomials is constructed entirely from the set of offset coordinates, and these polyno-mials are defined only on the offset window considered. Compared to a Fourier transform, this is a major advantage since there is no effect of a limited spatial bandwidth. The AVO of normal-moveout corrected data may be represented by a data gather where the orthogonal polynomial coefficients are given as time traces with each trace revealing a certain AVO characteristic. For instance, the stack is proportional to the zeroth-order coefficient, the mean gradient is given by the firstorder coefficient, while the second-order coefficient indicates whether the AVO increases and then decreases, or vice versa. |
