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ABSTRACT Full-waveform inversion is re-emerging as a powerful data-fitting procedure for quantitative seismic imaging of the subsurface from wide-azimuth seismic data. This method is suitable to build high-resolution velocity models provided that the targeted area is sampled by both diving waves and reflected waves. However, the conventional formulation of full-waveform inversion prevents the reconstruction of the small wavenumber components of the velocity model when the subsurface is sampled by reflected waves only. This typically occurs as the depth becomes significant with respect to the length of the receiver array. This study first aims to highlight the limits of the conventional form of full-waveform inversion when applied to seismic reflection data, through a simple canonical example of seismic imaging and to propose a new inversion workflow that overcomes these limitations. The governing idea is to decompose the subsurface model as a background part, which we seek to update and a singular part that corresponds to some prior knowledge of the reflectivity. Forcing this scale uncoupling in the full-waveform inversion formalism brings out the transmitted wavepaths that connect the sources and receivers to the reflectors in the sensitivity kernel of the full-waveform inversion, which is otherwise dominated by the migration impulse responses formed by the correlation of the downgoing direct wavefields coming from the shot and receiver positions. This transmission regime makes full-waveform inversion amenable to the update of the long-to-intermediate wavelengths of the background model from the wide scattering-angle information. However, we show that this prior knowledge of the reflectivity does not prevent the use of a suitable misfit measurement based on cross-correlation, to avoid cycle-skipping issues as well as a suitable inversion domain as the pseudo-depth domain that allows us to preserve the invariant property of the zero-offset time. This latter feature is useful to avoid updating the reflectivity information at each non-linear iteration of the full-waveform inversion, hence considerably reducing the computational cost of the entire workflow. Prior information of the reflectivity in the full-waveform inversion formalism, a robust misfit function that prevents cycle-skipping issues and a suitable inversion domain that preserves the seismic invariant are the three key ingredients that should ensure well-posedness and computational efficiency of full-waveform inversion algorithms for seismic reflection data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of dense networks of broad-band seismographs makes teleseismic data amenable to full-waveform inversion (FWI) methods for high-resolution lithospheric imaging. Compared to scattered-field migration, FWI seeks to involve the full seismic wavefield in the inversion. We present a parametric analysis of 2-D frequency-domain FWI in the framework of lithospheric imaging from teleseismic data to identify the main factors that impact on the quality of the reconstructed compressional (P)-wave and shear (S)-wave speed models. Compared to controlled-source seismology, the main adaptation of FWI to teleseismic configuration consists of the implementation with a scattered-filed formulation of plane-wave sources that impinge on the base of the lithospheric target located below the receiver network at an arbitrary incidence angle. Seismic modelling is performed with a hp-adaptive discontinuous Galerkin method on unstructured triangular mesh. A quasi-Newton inversion algorithm provides an approximate accounting for the Hessian operator, which contributes to reduce the footprint of the coarse acquisition geometry in the imaging. A versatile algorithm to compute the gradient of the misfit function with the adjoint-state method allows for abstraction between the forward-problem operators and the meshes that are during seismic modelling and inversion, respectively. An approximate correction for obliquity is derived for future application to real teleseismic data under the two-dimension approximation. Comparisons between the characteristic scales involved in exploration geophysics and in teleseismic seismology suggest that the resolution gain provided by full waveform technologies should be of the same order of magnitude for both applications. We first show the importance of the surface-reflected wavefield to dramatically improve the resolving power of FWI by combining tomography-like and migration-like imaging through the incorporation of the forward-scattered and the backscattered wavefields in the inversion. The resolution of FWI is assessed through checkerboard tests and confirms a resolution of the order of the wavelength for both the P and S speeds, when the full wavefield is incorporated in the inversion. Secondly, we show that computationally efficient strategies, which consist of decimating the number of frequency components involved in the inversion, do not apply to teleseismic acquisitions, because the scattering-angle bandwidth sampled by plane-wave sources can be narrow and coarsely sampled, compared to that provided by dense profiles of point sources in exploration seismology. The waveform inversion is less sensitive to the band of incidence angles spanned by the plane-wave sources and to the sampling of this band. However, the deficit of vertically propagating plane waves hampers the vertical resolution of planar layers. Aliasing artefacts created by coarse arrays of receivers are illustrated. We show how taking into account the Hessian in the inversion and the suitable management of frequencies in the inversion help to mitigate these artefacts. Acceptable reconstructions are shown for both the P- and S-wave speeds for a receiver spacing of up to 20 km in the 0.1–0.4 Hz frequency range. Building a reliable initial model for FWI is a highly non-linear problem in exploration seismology. We show how the low-frequency content of the teleseismic sources allow us to build accurate P- and S-wave speed models starting from simple vertical-gradient velocity models. All of these results are derived using a 2-D realistic synthetic experiment that was performed with noise-free data. Most of conclusions of this parametric study should apply in three dimensions. The impact of noise and the footprint of other experimental parameters ... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SUMMARY The validity of isotropic approximation to perform acoustic full waveform inversion (FWI) of real wide-aperture anisotropic data can be questioned due to the intrinsic kinematic inconsistency between short- and large-aperture components of the data. This inconsistency is mainly related to the differences between the vertical and horizontal velocities in vertical-transverse isotropic (VTI) media. The footprint of VTI anisotropy on 2-D acoustic isotropic FWI is illustrated on a hydrophone data set of an ocean-bottom cable that was collected over the Valhall field in the North Sea. Multiscale FWI is implemented in the frequency domain by hierarchical inversions of increasing frequencies and decreasing aperture angles. The FWI models are appraised by local comparison with well information, seismic modelling, reverse-time migration (RTM) and source-wavelet estimation. A smooth initial VTI model parameterized by the vertical velocity V0 and the Thomsen parameters δ and ε were previously developed by anisotropic reflection traveltime tomography. The normal moveout () and horizontal () velocity models were inferred from the anisotropic models to perform isotropic FWI. The VNMO models allows for an accurate match of short-spread reflection traveltimes, whereas the Vh model, after updating by first-arrival traveltime tomography (FATT), allows for an accurate match of first-arrival traveltimes. Ray tracing in the velocity models shows that the first 1.5 km of the medium are sampled by both diving waves and reflections, whereas the deeper structure at the reservoir level is mainly controlled by short-spread reflections. Starting from the initial anisotropic model and keeping fixed δ and ε models, anisotropic FWI allows us to build a vertical velocity model that matches reasonably well the well-log velocities. Isotropic FWI is performed using either the NMO model or the FATT model as initial model. In both cases, horizontal velocities are mainly reconstructed in the first 1.5 km of the medium. This suggests that the wide-aperture components of the data have a dominant control on the velocity estimation at these depths. These high velocities in the upper structure lead to low values of velocity in the underlying gas layers (either equal or lower than vertical velocities of the well log), and/or a vertical stretching of the structure at the reservoir level below the gas. This bias in the gas velocities and the mispositioning in depth of the deep reflectors, also shown in the RTM images, are required to match the deep reflections in the isotropic approximation and highlight the footprint of anisotropy in the isotropic FWI of long-offset data. Despite the significant differences between the anisotropic and isotropic FWI models, each of these models produce a nearly-equivalent match of the data, which highlights the ill-posedness of acoustic anisotropic FWI. Hence, we conclude with the importance of considering anisotropy in FWI of wide-aperture data to avoid bias in the velocity reconstructions and mispositioning in depth of reflectors. Designing a suitable parameterization of the VTI acoustic FWI is a central issue to manage the ill-posedness of the FWI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This is the second paper in a two-part series that describes a massively parallel code that performs 2D full-waveform inversion of wide-aperture seismic data for imaging complex structures. We present several numerical validation of the full-waveform inversion code with both canonical and realistic synthetic examples. We illustrate how different multiscale strategies can be applied by either successive mono-frequency inversions or simultaneous multifrequency inversions and their impact on the convergence and the robustness of the inversion. We present a scalability analysis using a real marine data set recorded by a dense array of ocean bottom seismometers to image the crustal structure of a subduction zone. We obtained a speedup of 20 when using 50 processes on a PC cluster which allowed us to iteratively invert 13 frequencies of the full data set in less than 2 days. This computational performance will allow in the future more extensive analysis of full-waveform tomography methods when applied to representative case studies or when considering 3D geometries. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]