ESTIMATION OF SEA-FLOOR WAVE VELOCITIES AND DENSITY FROM PRESSURE AND PARTICLE-VELOCITY BY AVO ANALYSIS

This paper proposes a new method for inferring the density and P- and S-wave velocities at the sea bottom. The technique is based on estimating these parameters from the acoustic/elastic reflection coefficient calculated from point source measurements of pressure and vertical component of particle velocity recorded at the sea floor. The data may be collected either by using a fixed source and two-component receivers along a line, or a fixed two-component receiver and a moving source. By spectral division of the two-component recordings transformed to the frequency-radial wavenumber domain, an estimate is obtained of the slowness-dependent reflection coefficient, containing AVO information, which is inverted in a least-squares sense with respect to wave velocities and density. -from Authors