Multiple attenuation in the plane-wave domain by match filtering

We present a method of multiple attenuation in the plane-wave domain that uses a filter estimation procedure to match the angle dependent primaries to predict the observed multiples. The filter is obtained through the solution of an optimization problem. We use the primaries from the shallow part of the data (reflectivity) to estimate the multiples associated with these events that are correct in traveltime, but not necessarily in amplitude. Afterwards a filter related to the inverse of the source is estimated using adjacent plane-wave traces on either side of the trace of interest and a filter is estimated for the target ray-parameter trace. Using this filter the amplitude and phase of the multiples are estimated and the predicted multiples are subtracted from the data to obtain multiple free data. The application of this method is illustrated on synthetic and real data and the results demonstrate its effectiveness in attenuating multiples. The proposed method is computationally very efficient.