Multiple attenuation in the parabolic τ-p domain using wavefront characteristics of multiple generating primaries

The problem of multiple attenuation has been solved only partially. One of the most common methods of attenuating multiples is an approach based on the Radon transform. It is commonly accepted that the parabolic Radon transform method is only able to attenuate multiples with significant moveouts. We propose a new 2-D method for attenuation of both surface‐related and interbed multiples in the parabolic τ-p domain. The method is based on the prediction of a multiple model from the wavefront characteristics of the primary events. Multiple prediction comprises the following steps: 1) For a given multiple code, the angles of emergence and the radii of wavefront curvatures are estimated for primary reflections for each receiver in the common‐shotpoint gather. 2) The intermediate points which compose a specified multiple event are determined for each shot‐receiver pair. 3) Traveltimes of the multiples are calculated. Wavefields within time windows around the predicted traveltime curves may be considered as multiple model traces which we use for multiple attenuation process. Using the predicted multiple traveltimes, we can define the area in the τ-p domain which contains the main energy of the multiple event. Resolution improvement of the parabolic Radon operator can be achieved through a simple multiplication of each sample in the τ-p space by a nonlinear semblance function. In this work, we follow the idea of defining the multiple reject areas automatically by comparing the energy of the multiple model and the original input data in the τ-p space. We illustrate the usefulness of this algorithm for the attenuation of multiples on both synthetic and real data.