Multiples inversion imaging using a one-way propagation operator

Abstract

The one-way propagation operator in the frequency-space domain has the advantages of fast calculation speed and good adaptability to medium with lateral velocity variation. The full wavefield model constructed by the one-way propagation operator is iterative. As the number of iterations increases, the components of wavefield are more and more abundant. In the full wavefield model, the propagation and scattering processes are independent of each other. The former is determined by the propagation operator, while the latter is determined by the scattering operator. As each iteration increases, the wavefield component will increase by one order. As an inverse migration operator, the full wavefield model could feed back the imaging result to the data. By calculating the residual between the simulated data and the actual data, the reflectivity is updated. This is an inversion process. In this process, multiples will be imaged. In this way, the subsurface information contained in multiples is utilized and the imaging quality is greatly improved. The L₁-norm is used to constrain the imaging result, which further suppresses the artifacts and improves the imaging resolution. We have made some numerical examples in 2D case, explaining the principles and advantages of this methodology.