AVO Inversion in Ray Parameter Domain

AVO (Amplitude varies with offset) inversion is a powerful method to predict the rock properties beneath the earth. To implement the inversion, people usually transfer the seismic data from offset domain to angle domain. In contrast, converting the seismic data to ray parameter domain has more advantages for inversion: The ray parameter p is the derivatives of travel time with respect to offset, which is independent on velocity model and can be derived by seismic data directly. Besides that, in ray parameter domain, the AVO phenomena are determined by the velocity of the medium, which enables us to invert the velocity directly. In this paper, we discuss the basic theory for AVO in ray parameter domain (AVP), and illustrate the property of AVP by comparing with the AVO behavior in angle domain (AVA). After that, the AVP method is applied on the real seismic data, acquired from South-western China. The seismic data are inverted by AVP and AVA separately. The comparison between these two methods demonstrates the potential of AVP method in seismic inversion.