scholarly journals Multi-objective full waveform inversion in the absence of low frequencies

Author(s):  
Pawan Bharadwaj ◽  
Guy Drijkoningen ◽  
Wim A. Mulder
Geophysics ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 77 (4) ◽  
pp. R189-R198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yong Ma ◽  
Dave Hale ◽  
Bin Gong ◽  
Zhaobo (Joe) Meng

Multiple problems, including high computational cost, spurious local minima, and solutions with no geologic sense, have prevented widespread application of full waveform inversion (FWI), especially FWI of seismic reflections. These problems are fundamentally related to a large number of model parameters and to the absence of low frequencies in recorded seismograms. Instead of inverting for all the parameters in a dense model, image-guided full waveform inversion inverts for a sparse model space that contains far fewer parameters. We represent a model with a sparse set of values, and from these values, we use image-guided interpolation (IGI) and its adjoint operator to compute finely and uniformly sampled models that can fit recorded data in FWI. Because of this sparse representation, image-guided FWI updates more blocky models, and this blockiness in the model space mitigates the absence of low frequencies in recorded data. Moreover, IGI honors imaged structures, so image-guided FWI built in this way yields models that are geologically sensible.


Geophysics ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 83 (2) ◽  
pp. R77-R88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yunseok Choi ◽  
Tariq Alkhalifah

Full-waveform inversion (FWI) suffers from the cycle-skipping problem when the available frequency-band of data is not low enough. We have applied an exponential damping to the data to generate artificial low frequencies, which helps FWI to avoid cycle skipping. In this case, the least-squares misfit function does not properly deal with the exponentially damped wavefield in FWI because the amplitude of traces decays almost exponentially with increasing offset in a damped wavefield. Thus, we use a deconvolution-based objective function for FWI of the exponentially damped wavefield. The deconvolution filter includes inherently a normalization between the modeled and observed data; thus, it can address the unbalanced amplitude of a damped wavefield. We specifically normalize the modeled data with the observed data in the frequency-domain to estimate the deconvolution filter and selectively choose a frequency-band for normalization that mainly includes the artificial low frequencies. We calculate the gradient of the objective function using the adjoint-state method. The synthetic and benchmark data examples indicate that our FWI algorithm generates a convergent long-wavelength structure without low-frequency information in the recorded data.


Geophysics ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 81 (6) ◽  
pp. R339-R348 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yunyue Elita Li ◽  
Laurent Demanet

The availability of low-frequency data is an important factor in the success of full-waveform inversion (FWI) in the acoustic regime. The low frequencies help determine the kinematically relevant, low-wavenumber components of the velocity model, which are in turn needed to avoid convergence of FWI to spurious local minima. However, acquiring data less than 2 or 3 Hz from the field is a challenging and expensive task. We have explored the possibility of synthesizing the low frequencies computationally from high-frequency data and used the resulting prediction of the missing data to seed the frequency sweep of FWI. As a signal-processing problem, bandwidth extension is a very nonlinear and delicate operation. In all but the simplest of scenarios, it can only be expected to lead to plausible recovery of the low frequencies, rather than their accurate reconstruction. Even so, it still requires a high-level interpretation of band-limited seismic records into individual events, each of which can be extrapolated to a lower (or higher) frequency band from the nondispersive nature of the wave-propagation model. We have used the phase-tracking method for the event separation task. The fidelity of the resulting extrapolation method is typically higher in phase than in amplitude. To demonstrate the reliability of bandwidth extension in the context of FWI, we first used the low frequencies in the extrapolated band as data substitute, to create the low-wavenumber background velocity model, and then we switched to recorded data in the available band for the rest of the iterations. The resulting method, extrapolated FWI, demonstrated surprising robustness to the inaccuracies in the extrapolated low-frequency data. With two synthetic examples calibrated so that regular FWI needs to be initialized at 1 Hz to avoid local minima, we have determined that FWI based on an extrapolated [1, 5] Hz band, itself generated from data available in the [5, 15] Hz band, can produce reasonable estimations of the low-wavenumber velocity models.


2022 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-8
Author(s):  
Keith Millis ◽  
Guillaume Richard ◽  
Chengbo Li

In the life cycle of a seismic product, the lion's share of the budget and personnel hours is spent on acquisition. In most modern seismic surveys, acquisition involves hundreds of specialized personnel working for months or years. Seismic acquisition also must overcome potential liabilities and health, safety, and environmental concerns that rival facility, pipeline, construction, and other operational risks. As only properly acquired data can contribute effectively to processing and interpretation strategies, a great deal of importance is placed on acquisition quality. Arguably, many of the advances the seismic industry has experienced find their origin arising from advances in acquisition techniques. Full-waveform inversion (FWI), for example, can reach its full potential only when seismic acquisition has provided both low frequencies and long offsets.


Geophysics ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 83 (2) ◽  
pp. R117-R127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuanyuan Li ◽  
Yunseok Choi ◽  
Tariq Alkhalifah ◽  
Zhenchun Li ◽  
Kai Zhang

Conventional full-waveform inversion (FWI) based on the least-squares misfit function faces problems in converging to the global minimum when using gradient methods because of the cycle-skipping phenomena. An initial model producing data that are at most a half-cycle away from the observed data is needed for convergence to the global minimum. Low frequencies are helpful in updating low-wavenumber components of the velocity model to avoid cycle skipping. However, low enough frequencies are usually unavailable in field cases. The multiplication of wavefields of slightly different frequencies adds artificial low-frequency components in the data, which can be used for FWI to generate a convergent result and avoid cycle skipping. We generalize this process by multiplying the wavefield with itself and then applying a smoothing operator to the multiplied wavefield or its square to derive the nonlinearly smoothed wavefield, which is rich in low frequencies. The global correlation-norm-based objective function can mitigate the dependence on the amplitude information of the nonlinearly smoothed wavefield. Therefore, we have evaluated the use of this objective function when using the nonlinearly smoothed wavefield. The proposed objective function has much larger convexity than the conventional objective functions. We calculate the gradient of the objective function using the adjoint-state technique, which is similar to that of the conventional FWI except for the adjoint source. We progressively reduce the smoothing width applied to the nonlinear wavefield to naturally adopt the multiscale strategy. Using examples on the Marmousi 2 model, we determine that the proposed FWI helps to generate convergent results without the need for low-frequency information.


Geophysics ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 77 (2) ◽  
pp. R117-R127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antoine Guitton ◽  
Gboyega Ayeni ◽  
Esteban Díaz

The waveform inversion problem is inherently ill-posed. Traditionally, regularization schemes are used to address this issue. For waveform inversion, where the model is expected to have many details reflecting the physical properties of the Earth, regularization and data fitting can work in opposite directions: the former smoothing and the latter adding details to the model. We propose constraining estimated velocity fields by reparameterizing the model. This technique, also called model-space preconditioning, is based on directional Laplacian filters: It preserves most of the details of the velocity model while smoothing the solution along known geological dips. Preconditioning also yields faster convergence at early iterations. The Laplacian filters have the property to smooth or kill local planar events according to a local dip field. By construction, these filters can be inverted and used in a preconditioned waveform inversion strategy to yield geologically meaningful models. We illustrate with 2D synthetic and field data examples how preconditioning with nonstationary directional Laplacian filters outperforms traditional waveform inversion when sparse data are inverted and when sharp velocity contrasts are present. Adding geological information with preconditioning could benefit full-waveform inversion of real data whenever irregular geometry, coherent noise and lack of low frequencies are present.


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