Full-waveform inversion with reflected waves for 2D VTI media

Full-waveform inversion in anisotropic media using reflected waves suffers from the strong non-linearity of the objective function and trade-offs between model parameters. Estimating long-wavelength model components by fixing parameter perturbations, referred to as reflection-waveform inversion (RWI), can mitigate nonlinearity-related inversion issues. Here, we extend RWI to acoustic VTI (transversely isotropic with a vertical symmetry axis) media. To minimize trade-offs between the model parameters, we employ a new hierarchical two-stage approach that operates with the P-wave normal-moveout velocity and anisotropy coefficents ζ and η. First, is estimated using a fixed perturbation in ζ, and then we invert for η by fixing the updated perturbation in . The proposed 2D algorithm is tested on a horizontally layered VTI model.