Strong Scattering Elastic Full Waveform Inversion With the Envelope Fréchet Derivative

Abstract

Full waveform inversion (FWI) is, as an optimization problem, strongly nonconvex and is influenced intensely by the cycle skipping issue, especially for multiparameter inversions like the elastic case. When there are strong scattering heterogeneities in the target media, there will be more challenges for the inversion problem. The direct envelope inversion strategy uses the envelope Fréchet derivative to tackle the cycle skipping problem for strong scattering inversion and has been effectively used for the acoustic case. We extend the direct envelope inversion method to the elastic situation in this letter. We derive the elastic envelope Fréchet derivative and show how the strong scattering multiparameter elastic inversion is accomplished under the direct envelope inversion framework. Numerical tests with the SEG/EAGE salt velocity model proved the effectiveness of this method for the strong scattering elastic medium.