THE KURTOSIS OF REFLECTION COEFFICIENTS IN A FRACTAL SEQUENCE OF SEDIMENTARY LAYERS

Abstract

In the reflection seismic technique of hydrocarbon prospecting, the measured signal is the convolution of an unknown sequence of reflection coefficients by a statistically known source signature. A basic task of seismic processing is to estimate the sequence of reflection coefficients. The aim of this paper is to show that in case of a fractal sedimentation model, the conventional statistical descriptors (variance, skewness, kurtosis) of the reflection coefficient sequence are strongly dependent on, or are even divergent functions of, the resolution.