Revisiting Homomorphic Wavelet Estimation and Phase Unwrapping

Surface-consistent deconvolution is a standard processing technique in land data to uniformize the wavelet across all sources and receivers. The required wavelet estimation step is generally done in the homomorphic domain since this is a convenient way to separate the phase and the amplitude spectrum in a linear fashion. Unfortunately all surface-consistent deconvolutions make a minimum-phase assumption which is likely to be sub-optimal. Recent developments in statistical wavelet estimation demonstrate that nonminimum wavelets can be estimated directly from seismic data, thus offering promise to create a nonminimum phase surface-consistent deconvolution approach. Unfortunately the major impediment turns out to be phase unwrapping. In this paper we review several existing phase unwrapping techniques and discuss their advantages and inconveniences.