One-Way Wave Propagation and Migration in Ray Center Coordinate System of Vti Medium

Abstract

Summary The imaging precision of complex geological structure depend on an appropriate and accurate seismic wave propagation simulation methods. The methods of seismic wave simulation include two categories in the current seismic exploration. One is elastic wave equation method. It is relatively more accurate, but it is non-selective in the wave field to be simulated, which is slow in calculation, sensitive to velocity model and has relatively high requirements for computer hardware. The other one is ray method. It decomposes the wave field into a series of rays (or bundles of rays) by using the high-frequency approximation solution of wave equations, and then gets the ray path and ray travel time through ray tracing (It also can simulate the beam wave-field), and thus implements the simulation of wave-field propagation. The high-frequency approximation theory occupies an important position in pre-stack depth migration and tomography. Ray method is intuitive, efficient and flexible, but can cause problems such as caustics, ray shadow areas, etc. Therefore, it is a good practice to combine wave equation and ray theory in view of the different advantages of the above two methods, which is not only efficient, but also takes into account the accuracy.