3D frequency-domain acoustic full-waveform inversion using diffraction-angle filtering

Abstract

The success of seismic imaging techniques such as full-waveform inversion (FWI) depends on using a good starting velocity model or a background velocity model, which can be effectively built by long-wavelength components in the early stages of FWI. This study proposes an optimal strategy for performing 3D frequency-domain FWI with diffraction-angle filtering (DAF). This approach can perform optimized single-frequency FWI with lower computational costs and build a long-wavelength velocity structure by separating low-wavenumber components with DAF. Prior to applying this strategy, we confirm the performance of 3D frequency-domain FWI with DAF in the radiation pattern analysis. DAF effectively separates the diffraction energy of partial derivative wavefields according to the diffraction angle with a negligible increase in computational costs. We then apply our 3D FWI strategy with DAF on synthetic data generated from the 3D SEG/EAGE overthrust model. The wavenumber components are effectively separated, and a long-wavelength velocity model is estimated with DAF compared to conventional FWI. Finally, we apply our strategy to 3D ocean-bottom seismic data from the North Sea. As a result, we observe that 3D FWI with the DAF method successfully reconstructs a long-wavelength velocity structure on the real data using only a single-frequency component.