Time-domain full waveform inversion using the gradient preconditioning based on seismic wave energy: Application to the South China Sea

The gradient preconditioning algorithms based on Hessian matrices in time-domain full waveform inversion (FWI) are widely used now, but consume a lot of memory and do not fit the FWI of large models or actual seismic data well. To avoid the huge storage consumption, the gradient preconditioning approach based on seismic wave energy has been proposed it simulates the “approximated wave field” with the acoustic wave equation and uses the energy of the simulated wavefield to precondition the gradient. The method does not require computing and storing the Hessian matrix or its inverse and can effectively eliminate the effect caused by geometric diffusion and uneven illumination on gradient. The result of experiments in this article with field data from South China Sea confirms that the time-domain FWI using the gradient preconditioning based on seismic wave energy (GPWE) can achieve higher inversion accuracy for the deep high-velocity model and its underlying strata.