Statistical Horizontal Squeezing Transform and Its Application in Reflection Interface Identification of Deep Carbonate Reservoirs

Carbonate reservoirs exhibit complex internal structures and strong heterogeneity. Their seismic responses commonly show multicomponent superposition and pronounced nonstationary characteristics, which readily induce inter-component interference in time-frequency (TF) representations and pose challenges to the characterization of reflection interfaces. To address this issue, we propose a statistical horizontal squeezing transform (SHST) that reformulates group delay (GD) estimation from a pointwise derivative operation to a statistical estimation problem within local TF neighborhoods. Specifically, a statistical group delay estimator (SGDE) is constructed by introducing a weighted short-time Fourier transform (STFT) spectrum, allowing GD to be inferred through local TF statistical consistency rather than single-point gradients. This strategy enhances robustness against component interference and stabilizes energy reassignment. Experiments on synthetic signals and simulated geological models demonstrate that SHST achieves superior TF concentration and robustness under conditions of closely spaced multicomponent signals and noise. Applications to real deep carbonate seismic data further verify the effectiveness of the proposed method in characterizing the time-depth distribution of reflection interfaces, providing a reliable TF analysis tool for seismic interpretation of complex carbonate reservoirs.