A study of full waveform inversion of seismic velocity structure under a rugged seafloor by using joint OBN and VSP synthetic seismic data

Abstract

A numerical study of full waveform inversion (FWI) of seismic velocity structure was carried out by using synthetic ocean-bottom node (OBN) and vertical seismic profile (VSP) data. Based on an undulating seafloor modified from the commonly known Marmousi2 model, seismic forward modeling was performed to synthesize seismic P-wave data for the study. FWI experiments were performed using synthetic VSP, OBN and combined VSP + OBN data, separately, for the inversion of the velocity structure. The results show that the joint inversion of using the combined VSP + OBN synthetic data resulted in a very good velocity structure. Its accuracy is significantly higher than either using the VSP or OBN data alone. This suggests that the joint FWI using combined VSP + OBN data is a better image processing technique for the rugged seabed and complex structure below.