Abstract
Reflection coefficients are observed in nature to have stochastic behavior that departs significantly from the white‐noise model. Conventional deconvolution methods, however, assume reflectivity to be a white‐noise process. In this paper we analyze the deconvolution process, study the implications of the assumption of white noise, and show that the conventional operator can recover only the white component of reflectivity. A new stochastic model, fractionally integrated noise, is proposed for modeling reflectivity—a model that more closely approximates its spectral character and that encompasses white noise as a special case. We discuss different techniques to generalize the conventional deconvolution method based on the new model in order to handle reflectivity that is not white and compare the results of the conventional and generalized filters using data derived from well logs.