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March 2019 THE LEADING EDGE 197 Special Section: Full-waveform inversion Full-waveform inversion with randomized space shift Abstract Full-waveform inversion (FWI) has the great potential to retrieve high-fidelity subsurface models, with the constraint that the traveltime difference between the predicted data and the observed data should be less than half of the period at the lowest available frequency. If the above constraint is not satisfied, FWI will suffer from severe convergence problems and may get stuck in erroneous local minimum. To mitigate the dependence of FWI on the quality of the starting model, we apply the robust gradient sampling algorithm (GSA) on nonsmooth, nonconvex optimization problems to FWI. e original implementation of GSA requires explicit calculation of the gradient at each sampling point. When combined with FWI, this procedure involves tremendous computational costs for calculating the forward- and backward-propagated wavefields at each sampled velocity model within the vicinity of the current model estimate. rough numerical analyses, we find that the gradients corre- sponding to slightly perturbed velocity models can be approxi- mated by space shifting the gradient obtained from the current velocity model. By randomly choosing one space shift at each time step during the gradient calculation, the computational cost is thus the same as conventional FWI. Numerical examples based on the 2004 BP model demonstrate that the proposed method can provide much better results than conventional FWI when starting from a crude initial velocity model. Introduction Full-waveform inversion (FWI) has been shown to be a promising tool to achieve high-resolution models of the subsurface by utilizing the full information content of the observed seismic data (Plessix and Perkins, 2010; Sirgue et al., 2010; Warner et al., 2013; Shen et al., 2018). However, the success of FWI depends highly on the accuracy of the starting velocity model and the availability of low-frequency information in the seismic data. If the traveltime difference between the modeled data and the observed data is not within half of the period at the lowest available frequency, the so-called cycle-skipping problem appears, and FWI will get stuck in uninformative model estimates (Virieux and Operto, 2009). In other words, FWI is a highly nonlinear and nonconvex problem. e gradient sampling algorithm (GSA) is very robust in solving nonsmooth, nonconvex problems (Burke et al., 2005; Curtis and Que, 2013). Instead of working with a single model perturbation, GSA extends the search space by working with local neighborhoods through random sampling. However, the original implementation of GSA is computationally expensive because it needs to explicitly calculate the gradient for each sampled vector. Jizhong Yang 1 , Yunyue Elita Li 1 , Yanwen Wei 2 , Haohuan Fu 2 , and Yuzhu Liu 3 For conventional FWI, the gradient of the objective function with respect to the model parameters is calculated by crosscor- relating the forward-propagated source-side wavefield with the backward-propagated receiver-side wavefield at zero temporal and spatial lag before stacked over all sources and receivers (Tarantola, 1984). e computational cost would be at its least by solving the wave equation 2N s times, with N s the number of total sources. When combined with GSA, the computational cost would be increased to 2N s (N + 1), with N + 1 the number of sampled model vectors. Louboutin and Herrmann (2017) incorporate GSA into FWI with randomized implicit time shifts without incurring massive computational costs. e basic argument is that the effects of slightly perturbed velocity models within the vicinity of the current velocity model can be approximated by time shifts. Although numerical examples demonstrate that their method is less sensitive to the accuracy of the starting velocity model, no theoretical or numerical proofs are provided to support their argument. In this study, we revisit the concept of GSA in the context of FWI. Numerical analyses demonstrate that the gradients related to the perturbed velocity models can be obtained through space shifting the gradient calculated using the reference velocity model. Mathematically speaking, when adapting FWI in the framework of GSA, we can efficiently compute the sampled gradients by crosscorrelating the space-shifted forward- and backward- propagated wavefields calculated from the current model estimate. is approach maintains the advantages of GSA on solving nonsmooth, nonconvex problems, while the computational cost is dramatically reduced compared to the original formulation of GSA. Nonetheless, the computational cost is still more expensive than that of conventional FWI because integration over space shifts within the properly selected ranges must be performed at every time step. To further bring the computational cost in line with that of conventional FWI, we propose to randomly choose only one space shift at each time step. e rest of this paper is organized as follows. In the methodol- ogy section, we give a brief review of conventional FWI. en we introduce GSA and describe how to approximately calculate the sampling gradients with high efficiency using random space shifts. In the numerical examples, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our method based on the 2004 BP model. Finally, we give a short summary in the conclusion section. Hereafter, we refer to the proposed method as random space-shifted FWI (RSS-FWI), and we abbreviate conventional FWI as CFWI. Methodology FWI aims to minimize the difference between modeled and recorded data in a least-squares sense: 1 National University of Singapore, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Singapore. E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]. 2 Tsinghua University, Department of Earth System Science, Beijing, China. E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]. 3 Tongji University, State Key Laboratory of Marine Geology, Shanghai, China. E-mail: [email protected]. https://doi.org/10.1190/tle38030197.1. Downloaded 08/20/19 to 137.132.217.229. Redistribution subject to SEG license or copyright; see Terms of Use at http://library.seg.org/

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  • March 2019 THE LEADING EDGE 197Special Section: Full-waveform inversion

    Full-waveform inversion with randomized space shift

    AbstractFull-waveform inversion (FWI) has the great potential to

    retrieve high-fidelity subsurface models, with the constraint that the traveltime difference between the predicted data and the observed data should be less than half of the period at the lowest available frequency. If the above constraint is not satisfied, FWI will suffer from severe convergence problems and may get stuck in erroneous local minimum. To mitigate the dependence of FWI on the quality of the starting model, we apply the robust gradient sampling algorithm (GSA) on nonsmooth, nonconvex optimization problems to FWI. The original implementation of GSA requires explicit calculation of the gradient at each sampling point. When combined with FWI, this procedure involves tremendous computational costs for calculating the forward- and backward-propagated wavefields at each sampled velocity model within the vicinity of the current model estimate. Through numerical analyses, we find that the gradients corre-sponding to slightly perturbed velocity models can be approxi-mated by space shifting the gradient obtained from the current velocity model. By randomly choosing one space shift at each time step during the gradient calculation, the computational cost is thus the same as conventional FWI. Numerical examples based on the 2004 BP model demonstrate that the proposed method can provide much better results than conventional FWI when starting from a crude initial velocity model.

    IntroductionFull-waveform inversion (FWI) has been shown to be a

    promising tool to achieve high-resolution models of the subsurface by utilizing the full information content of the observed seismic data (Plessix and Perkins, 2010; Sirgue et al., 2010; Warner et al., 2013; Shen et al., 2018). However, the success of FWI depends highly on the accuracy of the starting velocity model and the availability of low-frequency information in the seismic data. If the traveltime difference between the modeled data and the observed data is not within half of the period at the lowest available frequency, the so-called cycle-skipping problem appears, and FWI will get stuck in uninformative model estimates (Virieux and Operto, 2009). In other words, FWI is a highly nonlinear and nonconvex problem.

    The gradient sampling algorithm (GSA) is very robust in solving nonsmooth, nonconvex problems (Burke et al., 2005; Curtis and Que, 2013). Instead of working with a single model perturbation, GSA extends the search space by working with local neighborhoods through random sampling. However, the original implementation of GSA is computationally expensive because it needs to explicitly calculate the gradient for each sampled vector.

    Jizhong Yang1, Yunyue Elita Li1, Yanwen Wei2, Haohuan Fu2, and Yuzhu Liu3

    For conventional FWI, the gradient of the objective function with respect to the model parameters is calculated by crosscor-relating the forward-propagated source-side wavefield with the backward-propagated receiver-side wavefield at zero temporal and spatial lag before stacked over all sources and receivers (Tarantola, 1984). The computational cost would be at its least by solving the wave equation 2Ns times, with Ns the number of total sources. When combined with GSA, the computational cost would be increased to 2Ns (N + 1), with N + 1 the number of sampled model vectors.

    Louboutin and Herrmann (2017) incorporate GSA into FWI with randomized implicit time shifts without incurring massive computational costs. The basic argument is that the effects of slightly perturbed velocity models within the vicinity of the current velocity model can be approximated by time shifts. Although numerical examples demonstrate that their method is less sensitive to the accuracy of the starting velocity model, no theoretical or numerical proofs are provided to support their argument.

    In this study, we revisit the concept of GSA in the context of FWI. Numerical analyses demonstrate that the gradients related to the perturbed velocity models can be obtained through space shifting the gradient calculated using the reference velocity model. Mathematically speaking, when adapting FWI in the framework of GSA, we can efficiently compute the sampled gradients by crosscorrelating the space-shifted forward- and backward-propagated wavefields calculated from the current model estimate. This approach maintains the advantages of GSA on solving nonsmooth, nonconvex problems, while the computational cost is dramatically reduced compared to the original formulation of GSA. Nonetheless, the computational cost is still more expensive than that of conventional FWI because integration over space shifts within the properly selected ranges must be performed at every time step. To further bring the computational cost in line with that of conventional FWI, we propose to randomly choose only one space shift at each time step.

    The rest of this paper is organized as follows. In the methodol-ogy section, we give a brief review of conventional FWI. Then we introduce GSA and describe how to approximately calculate the sampling gradients with high efficiency using random space shifts. In the numerical examples, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our method based on the 2004 BP model. Finally, we give a short summary in the conclusion section. Hereafter, we refer to the proposed method as random space-shifted FWI (RSS-FWI), and we abbreviate conventional FWI as CFWI.

    MethodologyFWI aims to minimize the difference between modeled and

    recorded data in a least-squares sense:

    1National University of Singapore, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Singapore. E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] University, Department of Earth System Science, Beijing, China. E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] University, State Key Laboratory of Marine Geology, Shanghai, China. E-mail: [email protected].

    https://doi.org/10.1190/tle38030197.1.

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  • 198 THE LEADING EDGE March 2019 Special Section: Full-waveform inversion

    minm

    E m( ) = 12Ru xs ,xr ,t ;m( ) � d xs ,xr ,t( ) 2

    2, (1)

    in which m is the model parameter (i.e., slowness), xs is the source location, and xr is the receiver location. u(xs, xr, t;m) is the wavefield obtained by solving the wave equation, and R is the sampling operator at the receiver location. The gradient-based method can be used to iteratively update the initial model, with the gradient g(x) calculated as (Tarantola, 1984):

    g x( ) = 2m x( ) U x,t ;m( )V x,t ;m( )∫ dt, (2)

    where U(x,t;m) is the source-side forward-propagated wavefield, and V(x,t;m) is the receiver-side backward-propagated wavefield. The computational cost would be solving the simulation problem 2Ns times, with Ns the number of total sources.

    GSA aims to minimize the misfit function in equation 1 near the neighborhood of the current model estimate m ∈ m −δ ,m +δ[ ], where m ∈ m −δ ,m +δ[ ] is the perturbed velocity model within the vicinity of current model estimate m, and δ is the radius of the sampling ball. By choosing N + 1 samples Mk = {mk 0, …, mk N}, and calculating the corresponding gradients Gk = {gk 0, …, gk N}, GSA obtains the final search direction by summing Gk with coefficients α i > 0, α i

    i=0

    N

    ∑ = 1,

    gk = α i g kii=0

    N

    ∑ . (3)

    If directly adapting FWI in the framework of GSA with its original formulation, we need to calculate the sampled gradients by solving the wave equation 2Ns (N + 1) times, which is impractical for typically sized FWI problems. To circumvent this problem, we argue that if we can approximate the sampled gradient with the gradient calculated on the current model estimate through space shifting, there is no need to solve additional simulation problems for each sampled velocity model. The computational cost can thus be reduced to some extent.

    That is to say, for a slightly perturbed velocity model m ∈ m −δ ,m +δ[ ] nearby m, the gradient g x;m( ) ≈ g x − h;m( ) ≈ 2m x( ) U x − h,t ;m( )V x − h,t ;m( )dt∫ can be approximated by space shifting the gradient g(x;m) using g x;m( ) ≈ g x − h;m( ) . Mathematically speaking, it can be calculated by space shifting the forward- and backward-propagated wavefields in the same spatial direction and crosscorrelating them, formulated as:

    g x;m( ) ≈ g x − h;m( ) ≈ 2m x( ) U x − h,t ;m( )V x − h,t ;m( )dt∫ . (4)

    To support the aforementioned argument, we design the following numerical examples to analyze the relationship between the sampled gradients and the gradient calculated on the current model estimate. The velocity model is defined by:

    v z( ) =

    1500 m / s( ), if z < 100m2000.0 m / s( )+ β * z, elsewhere

    ⎧⎨⎪

    ⎩⎪ , (5)

    where β is the vertical constant gradient, and z is the depth. The gradient β is 1.5 s-1, 0.7 s-1, and 1.3 s-1 for the true velocity model, the reference velocity model, and the sampled velocity model, respectively. The model dimensions are 401 × 201 with 10 m grid intervals. The source is located at (950 m, 0 m), and there are 201 receivers evenly distributed on the surface at 10 m receiver spacing. The source time function is a Ricker wavelet with a peak frequency of 10 Hz. The recording time is 3.0 s, with a time interval of 1 ms. Figure 1 shows the snapshots at 0.5 s for both the forward- and backward-propagated wavefields and the cor-responding gradients calculated from the reference and the sampled velocity models. There is an apparent spatial shift between the reference and the sampled gradients, as illustrated by the red and blue stars and the yellow arrow in Figures 1c and 1f.

    The final search direction related to GSA as in equation 3 can thus be computed as:

    g x( ) = α h( )2m x( )∑ U x − h,t ;m( )V x − h,t ;m( )∫ dt. (6)

    In equation 6, h denotes horizontal or vertical shifts. It is worth noting that the integration over h on the right side of equation 6 calls for a full-matrix multiplication in a finite-difference discretization at each time step (Mulder, 2014). The cost can easily overwhelm that of ordinary time stepping. In 2D, this additional integral in dimension of h increases the computational cost by a factor of Nh =hmax /dh, where Nh is the total number of grid points in h, and dh is the grid interval in h. To further alleviate this computational overburden, we propose to randomly choose only one h within the limit of hmax at each time step:

    g x( ) = 2m x( ) U x − ht ,t ;m( )V x − ht ,t ;m( )∫ dt. (7)

    In this way, we do not need to choose coefficients α(h) explicitly because α(ht) = 1 for each time step.

    ExamplesWe apply our method to the 2004 BP model (Billette and

    Brandsberg-Dahl, 2005) (Figure 2a). It has a complex rugose salt body and subsalt slow velocity anomalies. The model dimensions are 257 × 192 with 25 m grid intervals. There are 64 shots evenly spaced at 100 m shot intervals, and each shot is recorded with 257 receivers evenly distributed at 25 m receiver spacing. The sources and receivers are on the surface, with the first source and receiver located at distances of 50 and 0 m, respectively. The source time function is a Ricker wavelet with a peak frequency of 10 Hz. The recording time is 8.0 s with a time interval of 2 ms. A two-layer model in Figure 2b, which consists of sea water (1486 m/s) and homogeneous sediment (4100 m/s), is used as the starting velocity model.

    Figure 3 presents the shot gathers computed at source location x = 1050 m from the true and initial velocity models, and the

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  • March 2019 THE LEADING EDGE 199Special Section: Full-waveform inversion

    Figure 1. Snapshots at 0.5 s of the forward-propagated (first column) and backward-propagated (second column) wavefields and the corresponding gradients (third column). The snapshots on the top and bottom row are calculated from the reference velocity model and the sampled velocity model, respectively. A spatial shift can be observed between the reference gradient and the sampled gradient. The red star denotes the imaging point on the reference gradient, the blue star indicates the imaging point on the sampled gradient, and the yellow arrow shows the spatial shifting between the reference and sampled gradients.

    Figure 2. The 2004 BP model for FWI: (a) the true velocity model; (b) the starting velocity model.

    corresponding data residual. All data are plotted on the same amplitude scale for comparison. Only the direct wave in the water layer is correctly predicted from the initial velocity model. The amplitude of the sea water bottom reflection is inaccurate due to the wrong sedimentary velocity. In addition, a refracted wave occurs because of the large velocity contrast at the sea water bottom, but it cannot be observed from the shot gather calculated on the true velocity model. Diving waves and later reflections cannot be generated from the initial velocity model.

    We first implement CFWI and RSS-FWI at the lowest fre-quency band [2 Hz, 7 Hz] using a nonlinear conjugate gradient

    method with 400 iterations. No preconditioning is applied in either method. In particular, for the RSS-FWI, we run it with the maxi-mum spatial shift [hxmax, hzmax] = [ λ, 1/2λ] and [hxmax, hzmax] = [ 1/2λ ,0] consecutively, with hxmax and hzmax denoting the maximum spatial shifts at horizontal and vertical direction, respectively, and λ = v/f0 as the reference wavelength calculated with the local velocity and the dominant frequency f0 of the source wavelet.

    Figures 4a and 4b show the inversion results at the lowest frequency band [2 Hz, 7 Hz] from the CFWI and the RSS-FWI, respectively. It is difficult to evaluate the accuracy of both models based on visual comparison. The sedimentary basin structure

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  • 200 THE LEADING EDGE March 2019 Special Section: Full-waveform inversion

    between x = 400 m and 1000 m, as well as the top of the salt, may be interpreted from the CFWI result (Figure 4a), as marked by the red curve. However, as compared with the true model in Figure 2a, these structures are mispositioned with incorrect velocity values. The RSS-FWI result (Figure 4b) does not appear to be any better than the CFWI result since it contains less interpretable structures. Nonetheless, the RSS-FWI result reflects more low-wavenumber updates.

    The velocity pseudo-logs at x = 1975 m and 3000 m are displayed in Figures 5a and 5b, respectively. It is obvious that RSS-FWI has pushed the low velocity updates much deeper (to 3 km in depth) than CFWI does (to 1 km in depth). The RSS-FWI result actually well reconstructs the tomographic components of the true velocity model. The wavenumber spectra of the model updates are shown in Figures 5c and 5d, accordingly. The zero wavenumber compo-nents are more accurately retrieved in the RSS-FWI result (red line) than in the CFWI result (magenta line).

    In Figure 6, shot gathers computed at source location x = 1050 m from the true velocity model, the CFWI result in Figure 4a and the RSS-FWI result in Figure 4b are illustrated

    on the same amplitude scale. It is obvious that the diving waves, which play an important role in FWI, are more accurately predicted from the RSS-FWI result (Figures 6d and 6e) than the CFWI result (Figures 6b and 6c) where cycle skipping can be clearly observed, as marked by the red ovals.

    To further validate accuracy of the models, we reinitialize the CFWI using the inversion results in Figures 4a and 4b as the starting models. For convenience, we name the conventional FWI reinitialized with the conventional FWI as CFWI-CFWI, and the conventional FWI reinitialized with the RSS-FWI as RSS-FWI-CFWI. The multiscale strategy (Bunks et al., 1995) from low to high frequencies is employed. The frequency bands are [2 Hz, 7 Hz], [2 Hz, 11 Hz], [2 Hz, 15 Hz], and [2 Hz, 19 Hz]. In each frequency band, the nonlinear conjugate gradient method is performed with 400 iterations.

    Figures 7a and 7b display the final inversion results starting from Figures 4a and 4b, respectively. Starting from the CFWI result at the lowest frequency band (Figure 4a), the final model reconstruction (Figure 7a) is barely updated, indicating that the inversion is stuck in an undesired local minimum. In contrast, in

    the reconstructed velocity model (Figure 7b) starting from the RSS-FWI result (Figure 4b), the boundaries of the rugose salt body can be clearly identi-fied. The subsalt slow velocity anomalies highlighted by the blue oval are well resolved, indicating that the RSS-FWI-CFWI iterations have matched deeper reflections besides the early transmission arrivals. On the left edge of the acquisi-tion, erroneous low velocity anomalies (black box) appear around the salt body due to the limited illumination.

    Figures 8a and 8b show the velocity pseudo-log comparisons at x = 1975 m and 3000 m between the true velocity model and the inversion results in

    Figure 4. The inversion results at the lowest frequency band [2 Hz, 7 Hz] from (a) the CFWI and (b) the RSS-FWI. The sedimentary basin structure between x = 400 m and 1000 m as well as the top of the salt may be interpreted from the CFWI result, as marked by the red curve. However, they are mispositioned with incorrect velocity values compared with the true velocity model in Figure 2a.

    Figure 3. Shot gathers computed at source location x = 1050 m from (a) the true velocity model, (b) the initial velocity model, and (c) the corresponding data residual. All data are plotted with the same scale for comparison.

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  • March 2019 THE LEADING EDGE 201Special Section: Full-waveform inversion

    Figure 5. The velocity pseudo-logs at (a) x = 1975 m and (b) x = 3000 m. The black line denotes the true velocity model, the blue line indicates the initial velocity model, the magenta line represents the CFWI result in Figure 4a, and the red line represents the RSS-FWI result in Figure 4b. The wavenumber spectra of the model updates are shown in (c) and (d), respectively. The black line denotes the true model perturbation, the magenta line represents the model updates from the CFWI result, and the red line represents the model updates from the RSS-FWI result.

    Figure 6. Shot gathers computed at source location x = 1050 m from (a) the true velocity model, (b) the CFWI result in Figure 4a, and (d) the RSS-FWI result in Figure 4b. The corresponding data residuals are depicted in (c) and (e), respectively. All data are plotted with the same scale for comparison. The diving waves, as marked by the red ovals, are more accurately predicted from the RSS-FWI result in Figure 4b than the CFWI result in Figure 4a.

    Figure 7. The final inversion results of (a) the CFWI-CFWI and (b) the RSS-FWI-CFWI at the frequency band [2 Hz, 19 Hz] using multiscale strategy starting from the results of the CFWI and the RSS-FWI shown in Figures 4a and 4b, respectively. The blue oval denotes the subsalt low-velocity anomalies that are well resolved, and the black box indicates the erroneous low-velocity anomalies due to the limited illumination on the edge of the acquisition.

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  • 202 THE LEADING EDGE March 2019 Special Section: Full-waveform inversion

    Figures 7a and 7b. The RSS-FWI-CFWI result (red line) matches more closely with the true velocity model (black line) than the CFWI-CFWI result (magenta line). The wavenumber spectra of the model updates are depicted in Figures 8c and 8d, respectively. The improvements compared to Figures 5c and 5d are significant, where the RSS-FWI-CFWI has well revealed the wavenumber components from low to high bands.

    Figure 9 compares the shot gathers computed at source location x = 1050 m from the true velocity model and the inversion results in Figures 7a and 7b with the same amplitude scale. Large data residuals remain in the CFWI-CFWI result, especially for the later reflection events. On the contrary, the RSS-FWI-CFWI result accurately predicts most of the wave phenomena for both early transmission and late reflection events.

    Based on the improvements shown in Figure 7 to Figure 9, we conclude that the RSS-FWI result in Figure 4b is indeed a much better initial velocity model to reinitialize the CFWI sweeping from low to high frequencies, because of a more accurate low-wavenumber reconstruction that correctly predicts the kine-matics of both the early arrivals and the reflections.

    ConclusionsTo reduce the reliance of FWI on the accuracy of the starting

    models, we have introduced a gradient sampling process in addition to CFWI iterations. Numerical analyses suggest that the sampled gradient at a perturbed model within the close vicinity of the current model can be approximated by a space shift of the gradient calculated at the current model, which

    Figure 9. Shot gathers computed at source location x = 1050 m from (a) the true velocity model, (b) the CFWI-CFWI result in Figure 7a, and (d) the RSS-FWI-CFWI result in Figure 7b. The corresponding data residuals are depicted in (c) and (e), respectively. All data are plotted with the same scale for comparison. Large data residuals remain in the CFWI-CFWI result in Figure 7a, while the data residuals are dramatically reduced from the RSS-FWI-CFWI result in Figure 7b.

    Figure 8. The velocity pseudo-logs at (a) x = 1975 m and (b) x = 3000 m. The black line denotes the true velocity model, the magenta line represents the CFWI-CFWI result in Figure 7a, and the red line represents the RSS-FWI-CFWI result in Figure 7b. The wavenumber spectra of the model updates are shown in (c) and (d), respectively. The black line denotes the true model perturbation, the magenta line represents the model updates from the CFWI-CFWI result, and the red line represents the model updates from the RSS-FWI-CFWI result.

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  • March 2019 THE LEADING EDGE 203Special Section: Full-waveform inversion

    enables fast random sampling and dramatically reduces the computational cost of the original implementation of GSA-based FWI. Hence, we name the proposed algorithm RSS-FWI. Numerical examples demonstrate that the RSS-FWI method results in superior inverted velocity model starting from a crude initial velocity model.

    AcknowledgmentsThe authors would like to acknowledge the financial support from the

    Singapore Economic Development Board Petroleum Engineering Professorship, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant numbers: 41474034, 41774122, 61702297, and 91530323), and the Open Project (grant number: MGK1808) of the State Key Laboratory of Marine Geology, Tongji University. Yunyue Elita Li and Jizhong Yang also acknowl-edge the funding of the Singapore Ministry of Education Tier-1 Grant (grant numbers: R-302-000-165-133 and R-302-000-182-114).

    Data and materials availabilityData associated with this research are available and can be obtained by

    contacting the corresponding author.

    Corresponding author: [email protected]

    ReferencesBillette, F. J., and S. Brandsberg-Dahl, 2005, The 2004 BP velocity benchmark:

    67th Conference and Exhibition, EAGE, Extended Abstracts, B035.Bunks, C., F. M. Saleck, S. Zaleski, and G. Chavent, 1995, Multiscale seismic

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