Comparison of wavelet estimation methods

Wavelet estimation is a very important task in seismic data processing and analysis such as deterministic deconvolution, seismic-to-well tie, and seismic inversion, among others. We investigated the wavelets estimated from four different methods: (1) the wavelet estimated from the seafloor signal; (2) the wavelet estimated fully from well-log data; (3) the wavelet estimated using seismic and well-log data; and (4) the wavelet estimated from sparse-spike deconvolution. The wavelets estimated from 2-D seismic data using the four methods are quite comparable to one another. The results of the deconvolution and inversion of the 2-D seismic data using the four wavelets show that the wavelet estimated from the seafloor signal can be as effective as those estimated from the more rigorous methods.