Absorption-Constrained Wavelet Power Spectrum Inversion for Enhancing Resolution of Nonstationary Seismic Data

Improving the resolution of nonstationary reflection seismic data without well data is challenging, as it requires prior estimation of the
$Q$
-value. The coupling of reflectivity sequence and wavelet introduces spectral fluctuations, rendering the extraction of
$Q$
highly unstable. While some statistical wavelet amplitude estimation methods, such as spectral shaping (SS) and contraction operator mapping (COM), can yield smooth wavelet amplitude spectra, they do not contribute to
$Q$
analysis as they lack a physical mechanism for absorption attenuation. Therefore, we propose an absorption-constrained wavelet power spectrum inversion (AWPSI) method based on the segmented stationary convolution model (SSCM). The absorption constraint (AC) term incorporates prior knowledge of the medium’s
$Q$
-effect and enables simultaneous inversion of wavelet amplitude spectra for all windows. Incorporating AWPSI into COM and SS methods leads to AWPSI-COM and AWPSI-SS methods, which yield higher precision wavelet power spectra and remove the spectral fluctuations caused by reflectivity sequences. We demonstrate that AWPSI enables COM to extract wavelet amplitude spectra more accurately while preserving the attenuation characteristics caused by
$Q$
-effect. Using the equivalent
$Q$
field obtained by the AWPSI-COM method, an inverse
$Q$
-filter can be performed to generate accurate high-resolution seismic profiles. Synthetic and actual stacked seismic data verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.