The introduction of a common diffraction surface model-based approach

The Common Reflection Surface stack method parameterizes and stacks seismic reflection events in a generalized stacking velocity analysis. The main drawback of Common reflection surface stack method is that, this method cannot handle conflicting dip situations where more than one event with different dips contributes to one zero offset samples. In this way, as the Common-Reflection-Surface stack method implementation considers just one event contributing to a given zero offset stack sample such that conflicting dip situations cannot be handled. To overcome the drawback of Common Reflection Surface stack method, proposed to consider a discrete finite number of operators for staking. To do this the coherence of operators is obtain in a range of dips then a threshold for the coherence is considered. Finally for the stacking just the operators are contributed that has more coherency than this threshold. The proposed method resolved the problem of contribution more than one event in to a zero offset sample in to some extent. However the big problem of proposed strategy is that, there is not a reliable touchstone for detection of such situations. Finding out such locations is difficult and missed contributions to the stacked section might cause artifacts in a subsequent poststack migration. The inability to determine the exact number of events that contributing to one zero offset sample is another problem of proposed strategy. causes a variation of the number of contributions to neighboring samples which, in turn, cause artifacts in subsequent processing steps. In fact, , the lack of a reliable criterion to identify the number of conflicting dips causes a variation of the number of contributions to neighboring samples which, in turn, cause artifacts in subsequent processing steps. This is deleterious for complex data where prestack migration is no viable option due to its requirements concerning the accuracy of the velocity model, such that we might have to rely on poststack migration. In addition to the handling of a small number of discrete dips, the conflicting dip problem has been addressed by explicitly considering a virtually continuous range of dips with a simplified Common Reflection Surface stack operator in a process termed Common Diffraction Surface stack. In analogy to the Common Reflection Surface stack, the Common Diffraction Surface stack has been implemented and successfully applied in a data driven manner and the problem of contribution of more than one event in a zero offset sample has largely been solved. As this comes along with significant computational costs, this method is only applicable to laboratories and researches and will not practical application in the industry.
We now present a much more efficient model-based approach to the Common Diffraction Surface stack which is intended to fully resolve the conflicting dip problem occurring in complex data and, thus, to allow to simulate a complete stacked section containing all mutually interfering reflection and/or diffraction events to optimized for poststack migration. The method makes use the principles of ray theory to forward calculate the parameters of Common Diffraction Surface operator directly in a velocity model. The required macro velocity model can be generated with any inversion method. This approach only requires a smooth macro velocity model of minor accuracy. We present results for a real land data set at the north of Iran and compare them to the Common Reflection Surface and data driven Common Diffraction Surface stack. Compared to the data driven approach, the computational effort is dramatically reduced with even improved results.