Frequency-dependent AVO attribute: theory and example

Fluid-saturated rocks generally have seismic velocities that depend upon frequency. Exploring this property may help us discriminate different fluids from seismic data. In this paper, we introduce a scheme to calculate a frequency-dependent AVO attribute in order to estimate seismic dispersion from pre-stack data, and apply it to North Sea data. The scheme essentially combines the two-term approximation of Smith and Gidlow (1987) with the method of spectral decomposition based on the Wigner-Ville distribution, which is used to achieve high resolution. The result suggests the potential of this method for detection of seismic dispersion due to fluid saturation.