Waveform inversion of passive seismic data using multi-scattered energy

Locating micro-seismic events highly relies on the velocity accuracy. Full waveform inversion (FWI) has the potential to invert velocity and micro-seismic source image simultaneously. However, waveform inversion in the micro-seismic case is dominated by transmission energy, which results in poor illumination and low resolution. We develop a waveform inversion using multi-scattered energy for passive seismic data to extract more information out of the data. By utilizing transmission information from the single- or double-scattered wavefield, computed from a predicted scatter field acting as secondary sources, we can provide better illumination of the velocity model. The inversion results on Marmousi model show that by taking advantage of multi-scattered energy and starting from a reasonable frequency (3Hz), the proposed method can yield better inverted velocity models and source images compared with conventional FWI.