Full waveform inversion based on hybrid gradient

The low-wavenumber components in the gradient of full waveform inversion(FWI)play a vital role in the stability of the inversion.However,when FWI is implemented in some high frequencies and current models are not far away from the real velocity model,an excessive number of low-wavenumber components in the gradient will also reduce the convergence rate and inversion accuracy.To solve this problem,this paper firstly derives a formula of scattering angle weighted gradient in FWI,then proposes a hybrid gradient.The hybrid gradient combines the conventional gradient of FWI with the scattering angle weighted gradient in each inversion frequency band based on an empirical formula derived herein.Using weighted hybrid mode,we can retain some low-wavenumber components in the initial lowfrequency inversion to ensure the stability of the inversion,and use more high-wavenumber components in the high-frequency inversion to improve the convergence rate.The results of synthetic data experiment demonstrate that compared to the conventional FWI,the FWI based on the proposed hybrid gradient can effectively reduce the low-wavenumber components in the gradient under the premise of ensuring inversion stability.It also greatly enhances the convergence rate and inversion accuracy,especially in the deep part of the model.And the field marine seismic data experiment also illustrates that the FWI based on hybrid gradient(HGFWI)has good stability and adaptability.

A Rayleigh Wave Globally Optimal Full Waveform Inversion Framework Based on GPU Parallel Computing

Conventional gradient-based full waveform inversion (FWI) is a local optimization, which is highly dependent on the initial model and prone to trapping in local minima. Globally optimal FWI that can overcome this limitation is particularly attractive, but is currently limited by the huge amount of calculation. In this paper, we propose a globally optimal FWI framework based on GPU parallel computing, which greatly improves the efficiency, and is expected to make globally optimal FWI more widely used. In this framework, we simplify and recombine the model parameters, and optimize the model iteratively. Each iteration contains hundreds of individuals, each individual is independent of the other, and each individual contains forward modeling and cost function calculation. The framework is suitable for a variety of globally optimal algorithms, and we test the framework with particle swarm optimization algorithm for example. Both the synthetic and field examples achieve good results, indicating the effectiveness of the framework. .

Multi-scale seismic full waveform inversion in the frequency-domain with a multi-grid method

Although full waveform inversion in the frequency domain can overcome the local minima problem in the time direction, such problem still exists in the space direction because of the media subsurface complexity. Based on the optimal steep descent methods, we present an algorithm which combines the preconditioned bi-conjugated gradient stable method and the multi-grid method to compute the wave propagation and the gradient space. The multiple scale prosperity of the waveform inversion and the multi-grid method can overcome the inverse problems local minima defect and accelerate convergence. The local inhomogeneous three-hole model simulated results and the Marmousi model certify the algorithm effectiveness.

Improved hybrid iterative optimization method for seismic full waveform inversion

In full waveform inversion （FWI）, Hessian information of the misfit function is of vital importance for accelerating the convergence of the inversion; however, it usually is not feasible to directly calculate the Hessian matrix and its inverse. Although the limited memory Broyden-Fletcher-Goldfarb-Shanno （L-BFGS） or Hessian-free inexact Newton （HFN） methods are able to use approximate Hessian information, the information they collect is limited. The two methods can be interlaced because they are able to provide Hessian information for each other; however, the performance of the hybrid iterative method is dependent on the effective switch between the two methods. We have designed a new scheme to realize the dynamic switch between the two methods based on the decrease ratio （DR） of the misfit function （objective function）, and we propose a modified hybrid iterative optimization method. In the new scheme, we compare the DR of the two methods for a given computational cost, and choose the method with a faster DR. Using these steps, the modified method always implements the most efficient method. The results of Marmousi and overthrust model testings indicate that the convergence with our modified method is significantly faster than that in the L-BFGS method with no loss of inversion quality. Moreover, our modified outperforms the enriched method by a little speedup of the convergence. It also exhibits better efficiency than the HFN method.

Frequency-domain auto-adapting full waveform inversion with blended source and frequency-group encoding

As a high quality seismic imaging method, full waveform inversion （FWI） can accurately reconstruct the physical parameter model for the subsurface medium. However, application of the FWI in seismic data processing is computationally expensive, especially for the three-dimension complex medium inversion. Introducing blended source technology into the frequency-domain FWI can greatly reduce the computational burden and improve the efficiency of the inversion. However, this method has two issues： first, crosstalk noise is caused by interference between the sources involved in the encoding, resulting in an inversion result with some artifacts; second, it is more sensitive to ambient noise compared to conventional FWI, therefore noisy data results in a poor inversion. This paper introduces a frequency-group encoding method to suppress crosstalk noise, and presents a frequency- domain auto-adapting FWI based on source-encoding technology. The conventional FWI method and source-encoding based FWI method are combined using an auto-adapting mechanism. This improvement can both guarantee the quality of the inversion result and maximize the inversion efficiency.

Three-dimensional frequency-domain full waveform inversion based on the nearly-analytic discrete method

The nearly analytic discrete(NAD)method is a kind of finite difference method with advantages of high accuracy and stability.Previous studies have investigated the NAD method for simulating wave propagation in the time-domain.This study applies the NAD method to solving three-dimensional(3D)acoustic wave equations in the frequency-domain.This forward modeling approach is then used as the“engine”for implementing 3D frequency-domain full waveform inversion(FWI).In the numerical modeling experiments,synthetic examples are first given to show the superiority of the NAD method in forward modeling compared with traditional finite difference methods.Synthetic 3D frequency-domain FWI experiments are then carried out to examine the effectiveness of the proposed methods.The inversion results show that the NAD method is more suitable than traditional methods,in terms of computational cost and stability,for 3D frequency-domain FWI,and represents an effective approach for inversion of subsurface model structures.

Sparse constrained encoding multi-source full waveform inversion method based on K-SVD dictionary learning

Full waveform inversion(FWI)is an extremely important velocity-model-building method.However,it involves a large amount of calculation,which hindsers its practical application.The multi-source technology can reduce the number of forward modeling shots during the inversion process,thereby improving the efficiency.However,it introduces crossnoise problems.In this paper,we propose a sparse constrained encoding multi-source FWI method based on K-SVD dictionary learning.The phase encoding technology is introduced to reduce crosstalk noise,whereas the K-SVD dictionary learning method is used to obtain the basis of the transformation according to the characteristics of the inversion results.The multiscale inversion method is adopted to further enhance the stability of FWI.Finally,the synthetic subsag model and the Marmousi model are set to test the effectiveness of the newly proposed method.Analysis of the results suggest the following:(1)The new method can effectively reduce the computational complexity of FWI while ensuring inversion accuracy and stability;(2)The proposed method can be combined with the time-domain multi-scale FWI strategy flexibly to further avoid the local minimum and to improve the stability of inversion,which is of significant importance for the inversion of the complex model.

Time Domain Full Waveform Inversion Based on Gradient Preconditioning with an Angle-Dependent Weighting Factor

There are lots of low wavenumber noises in the gradients of time domain full waveform inversion(FWI),which can seriously reduce the accuracy and convergence speed of FWI.Thus,we introduce an angle-dependent weighting factor to precondition the gradients so as to suppress the low wavenumber noises when the multi-scale FWI is implemented in the high frequency.Model experiments show that the FWI based on the gradient preconditioning with an angle-dependent weighting factor has faster convergence speed and higher inversion accuracy than the conventional FWI.The tests on real marine seismic data show that this method can adapt to the FWI of field data,and provide high-precision velocity models for the actual data processing.

Studies on quasi-Newton methods in timedomain multiscale full waveform inversion

The time-domain multiscale full waveform inversion(FWI)mitigates the influence of the local minima problem in nonlinear inversion via sequential inversion using different frequency components of seismic data.The quasi-Newton methods avoid direct computation of the inverse Hessian matrix,which reduces the amount of computation and storage requirement.A combination of the two methods can improve inversion accuracy and efficiency.However,the quasi-Newton methods in time-domain multiscale FWI still cannot completely solve the problem where the inversion is trapped in local minima.We first analyze the reasons why the quasi-Newton Davidon–Fletcher–Powell and Broyden–Fletcher–Goldfarb–Shanno methods likely fall into the local minima using numerical experiments.During seismic-wave propagation,the amplitude decreases with the geometric diffusion,resulting in the concentration of the gradient of the velocity model in the shallow part,and the deep velocity cannot be corrected.Thus,the inversion falls into the local minima.To solve this problem,we introduce a virtual-source precondition to remove the influence of geometric diffusion.Thus,the model velocities in the deep and shallow parts can be simultaneously completely corrected,and the inversion can more stably converge to the global minimum.After the virtual-source precondition is implemented,the problem in which the quasi-Newton methods likely fall into the local minima is solved.However,problems remain,such as incorrect search direction after a certain number of iterations and failure of the objective function to further decrease.Therefore,we further modify the process of timedomain multiscale FWI based on virtual-source preconditioned quasi-Newton methods by resetting the inverse of the approximate Hessian matrix.Thus,the validity of the search direction of the quasi-Newton methods is guaranteed.Numerical tests show that the modified quasi-Newton methods can obtain more reasonable inversion results,and they converge faster and entail lesser computational resources than the gradient method.

Full waveform inversion based on improved MLQN method

Full waveform inversion( FWI) is a challenging data-fitting procedure between model wave field value and theoretical wave field value. The essence of FWI is an optimization problem,and therefore,it is important to study optimization method. The study is based on conventional Memoryless quasi-Newton( MLQN)method. Because the Conjugate Gradient method has ultra linear convergence,the authors propose a method by using Fletcher-Reeves( FR) conjugate gradient information to improve the search direction of the conventional MLQN method. The improved MLQN method not only includes the gradient information and model information,but also contains conjugate gradient information. And it does not increase the amount of calculation during every iterative process. Numerical experiment shows that compared with conventional MLQN method,the improved MLQN method can guarantee the computational efficiency and improve the inversion precision.

Study of full waveform inversion based on L-BFGS algorithm

Full waveform inversion size of full waveform inversion will and the limitation of full waveform is mainly used to obtain high resolution velocity models of subsurface. The lead to a gigantic computation cost. Under the available computer resource inversion, the authors propose L-BFGS algorithm as the optimization method to solve this problem. In order to demonstrate the flexibility of the method, three different numerical experi- ments have been done to analyze the properties of full waveform inversion based on L-BFGS.

Study of frequency domain full waveform inversion based on Huber norm and L-BFGS algorithm

Full waveform inversion( FWI) is a high resolution inversion method,which can reveal detailed information of the structure and lithology under complex geological background. It is limited by many kinds of noises when the method applied to the real seismic data. Based on Huber function criterion,the objective function combinates the anti-noise of L1 norm and the stability of L2 norm in theory,the authors derive the gradient formula of the Huber function by using L-BFGS algorithm for FWI. The new method is proved by synthetic seismic data with the Gaussian noise and the impulse noise. Numerical test results show that L-BFGS algorithm is applied to the frequency domain FWI with the convergence speed and high calculation accuracy,and can effectively reduce computer memory usage; and the Huber function is more robust and stable than L2 norm even with the noises.

Time-Domain Full Waveform Inversion Using the Gradient Preconditioning Based on Transmitted Wave Energy

The gradient preconditioning approach based on seismic wave energy can effectively avoid the huge memory consumption of the gradient preconditioning algorithms based on the Hessian matrix. However, the accuracy of this approach is prone to be influ- enced by the energy of reflected waves. To tackle this problem, the paper proposes a new gradient preconditioning method based on the energy of transmitted waves. The approach scales the gradient through a precondition factor, which is calculated by the ‘ap- proximate transmission wavefield’ simulation based on the nonreflecting acoustic wave equation. The method requires no computing nor storing of the Hessian matrix and its inverse matrix. Furthermore, the proposed method can effectively eliminate the effects of geometric spreading and disproportionality in the gradient illumination. The results of model experiments show that the time-domain full waveform inversion (FWI) using the gradient preconditioning based on transmitted wave energy can achieve higher inversion accuracy for deep high-velocity bodies and their underlying strata in comparison with the one using the gradient preconditioning based on seismic wave energy. The field marine seismic data test shows that our proposed method is also highly applicable to the FWI of field marine seismic data.

Acoustic Based Crosshole Full Waveform Slowness Inversion in the Time Domain

We develop a new full waveform inversion (FWI) method for slowness with the crosshole data based on the acoustic wave equation in the time domain. The method combines the total variation (TV) regularization with the constrained optimization together which can inverse the slowness effectively. One advantage of slowness inversion is that there is no further approximation in the gradient derivation. Moreover, a new algorithm named the skip method for solving the constrained optimization problem is proposed. The TV regularization has good ability to inverse slowness at its discontinuities while the constrained optimization can keep the inversion converging in the right direction. Numerical computations both for noise free data and noisy data show the robustness and effectiveness of our method and good inversion results are yielded.

Wavelet packet envelope multi-scale full waveform inversion

Full waveform inversion( FWI) is an effective tool for constructing high resolution velocity models,but it is affected by a local minima problem. Without long offsets and low frequency data,it is difficult to apply the conventional multi-scale FWI to actual seismic data. In this study,the large offset and low frequency information are provided by the method of wavelet packet envelope for the conventional FWI. The gradient can be computed efficiently with the adjoint state method without any additional computational cost. Marmousi synthetic data is used to illustrate that,compared with Hilbert envelope-based FWI,wavelet packet envelope FWI can provide an adequately accurate model for the conventional FWI approach even when the initial model is far from the true model and the low-frequency data are missing.

Full waveform inversion based on initial model built from envelope inversion

Full waveform inversion is a fitting process based on full seismic wave field simulation data using the full waveform information in seismic records and theoretically it is the ultimate goal of seismic inversion. However,there are many problems to be solved in practical application. Firstly,it is the strong nonlinear problem between the seismic wave field and inversion parameters; secondly,the lack of low-frequency information in seismic records. In this study,the envelope is used as objective function inversion to provide the inversion result for the multi-scale full waveform inversion as the initial model,solving the lack of low-frequency information in seismic records. Taking the envelope of seismic records as the objective function in combination of multi-scale full waveform inversion became a new inversion strategy,which naturally achieved the compensation of shortage of low-frequency information and inversion from low frequency to high frequency,reducing the non-linearity in the inversion process. The comparison of the result of full waveform inversion of the initial model built through envelope inversion with the result of the conventional multi-scale full waveform inversion indicates the effectiveness of envelope inversion for the recovery of low-frequency information in seismic records.

Elastic Full Waveform Inversion Based on the Trust Region Strategy

In this paper, we investigate the elastic wave full-waveform inversion (FWI) based on the trust region method. The FWI is an optimization problem of minimizing the misfit between the observed data and simulated data. Usually, the line search method is used to update the model parameters iteratively. The line search method generates a search direction first and then finds a suitable step length along the direction. In the trust region method, it defines a trial step length within a certain neighborhood of the current iterate point and then solves a trust region subproblem. The theoretical methods for the trust region FWI with the Newton type method are described. The algorithms for the truncated Newton method with the line search strategy and for the Gauss-Newton method with the trust region strategy are presented. Numerical computations of FWI for the Marmousi model by the L-BFGS method, the Gauss-Newton method and the truncated Newton method are completed. The comparisons between the line search strategy and the trust region strategy are given and show that the trust region method is more efficient than the line search method and both the Gauss-Newton and truncated Newton methods are more accurate than the L-BFGS method.

Evaluation of Multi-Scale Full Waveform Inversion with Marine Vertical Cable Data

Seismic illumination plays an important role in subsurface imaging. A better image can be expected either through optimizing acquisition geometry or introducing more advanced seismic mi- gration and/or tomographic inversion methods involving illumination compensation. Vertical cable survey is a potential replacement of traditional marine seismic survey for its flexibility and data quality. Conventional vertical cable data processing requires separation of primaries and multiples before migration. We proposed to use multi-scale full waveform inversion （FWI） to improve illumination coverage of vertical cable survey. A deep water velocity model is built to test the capability of multi-scale FWI in detecting low velocity anomalies below seabed. Synthetic results show that multi-scale FWI is an effective model building tool in deep-water exploration. Geometry optimization through target ori- ented illumination analysis and multi-scale FWI may help to mitigate the risks of vertical cable survey. The combination of multi-scale FWI, low-frequency data and multi-vertical-cable acquisition system may provide both high resolution and high fidelity subsurface models.

Prismatic and full-waveform joint inversion

Prismatic wave is that it has three of which is located at the reflection interface reflection paths and two reflection points, one and the other is located at the steep dip angle reflection layer, so that contains a lot of the high and steep reflection interface information that primary cannot reach. Prismatic wave field information can be separated by applying Born approximation to traditional reverse time migration profile, and then the prismatic wave is used to update velocity to improve the inversion efficiency for the salt dame flanks and some other high and steep structure. Under the guidance of this idea, a prismatic waveform inversion method is proposed （abbreviated as PWI）. PWI has a significant drawback that an iteration time of PWI is more than twice as that of FWI, meanwhile, the full wave field information cannot all be used, for this problem, we propose a joint inversion method to combine prismatic waveform inversion with full waveform inversion. In this method, FWI and PWI are applied alternately to invert the velocity. Model tests suggest that the joint inversion method is less dependence on the high and steep structure information in the initial model and improve high inversion efficiency and accuracy for the model with steep dip angle structure.

Layer-Stripping Full Waveform Inversion with Damped Seismic Reflection Data

Full waveform inversion（FWI） directly minimizes errors between synthetic and observed data.For the surface acquisition geometry,reflections generated from deep reflectors are sensitive to overburden structure,so it is reasonable to update the macro velocity model in a top-to-bottom manner.For models dominated by horizontally layered structures,combination of offset/time weighting and constant update depth control（CUDC） is sufficient for layer-stripping FWI.CUDC requires ray tracing to determine reflection traveltimes at a constant depth.As model complexity increases,the multi-path effects will have to be considered.We developed a new layer-stripping FWI method utilizing damped seismic reflection data,which does not need CUDC and ray tracing.Numerical examples show that effective update depth（EUD） can be controlled by damping constants even in complex regions and the inversion result is more accurate than conventional methods.