Estimation of kinematic wavefront characteristics and their use for multiple attenuation

Kinematic wavefront characteristics of primary reflected waves can be used to predict and attenuate surface-, as well as interbed multiples. In order to estimate kinematic wavefront characteristics directly from unstacked data the common-shot-point homeomorphic-imaging (CSP HI) method can be applied. This macro-model-independent method is based on a new local moveout correction that depends on two wavefront parameters: the emergence angle and the radius of wavefront curvature of a reflected primary wavefront. These parameters can be estimated by optimizing the semblance correlation measure, calculated in the common-shot-gather along the travel time curve defined by the new moveout correction. In the case of local maxima in the semblance functional, an automatic maximization procedure might lead to a wrong estimation of these parameters. In order to avoid such a situation we propose an interactive, horizon-based implementation of the CSP HI method, which allows manual picking of the optimal wavefront parameters along the seismic line. Afterwards, we use the estimated emergence angles for the prediction and attenuation of multiples, based on the simple but powerful idea that any multiple event can be represented as a combination of primaries. A synthetic example shows the viability of the parameter estimation, prediction and attenuation procedure.