Three term AVO waveform inversion

Abstract

Density reflectivity is a useful AVO attribute to infer fluid saturation. However, accurate density reflectivity estimates are difficult to obtain due to the ill‐conditioned nature of the inverse problem. A small amount of noise will lead to large errors in the estimates. To improve the stability of the inversion, large angles and offsets are required, but these bring their own problems. NMO stretch and offset dependent tuning are two of these. This paper develops and demonstrates an AVO waveform inversion that incorporates into its forward model these factors allowing for accurate estimates even in their presence. Well constraints and various regularization strategies are employed to further enhance the reliability of the solution.