An Interesting Property of the Seismic Wavefield – Scale Properties for Waveform Matching

Abstract

In this paper we present the application of scale properties on waveform matching. Scale properties are properties of seismic waves which can be used to save computational time in full waveform modelling and inversion. The adimensionalization of motion equation allows the possible models to be divided in classes, such that the full waveform of one of the element in a class can be easily calculated from the full waveform of another element in the same class. These properties have two main applications: the first one concerns the full waveform modelling; when the full waveform is calculated from a given profile, it is straightforward to calculate the full waveform for any of the profiles in the same class. The second application concerns the full waveform matching: when a experimental seismogram is recorded, and a synthetic one is calculated, before comparing them, it can be useful to change the synthetic model to another in the same class which is closer to the experimental one.