Transmission + reflection anisotropic wave-equation traveltime and waveform inversion

Shihang Feng*, Gerard T. Schuster

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

33 Scopus citations

Abstract

A transmission + reflection wave-equation traveltime and waveform inversion method is presented that inverts the seismic data for the anisotropic parameters in a vertical transverse isotropic medium. The simultaneous inversion of anisotropic parameters v p0 and ε is initially performed using transmission wave-equation traveltime inversion method. Transmission wave-equation traveltime only provides the low-intermediate wavenumbers for the shallow part of the anisotropic model; in contrast, reflection wave-equation traveltime estimates the anisotropic parameters in the deeper section of the model. By incorporating a layer-stripping method with reflection wave-equation traveltime, the ambiguity between the background-velocity model and the depths of reflectors can be greatly mitigated. In the final step, multi-scale full-waveform inversion is performed to recover the high-wavenumber component of the model. We use a synthetic model to illustrate the local minima problem of full-waveform inversion and how transmission and reflection wave-equation traveltime can mitigate this problem. We demonstrate the efficacy of our new method using field data from the Gulf of Mexico.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)423-442
Number of pages20
JournalGeophysical Prospecting
Volume67
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Feb 1 2019

Keywords

  • Anisotropy
  • Inversion
  • Traveltime

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Geochemistry and Petrology
  • Geophysics

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