An extended Gauss-Newton method for full waveform inversion

Abstract

Full Waveform Inversion (FWI) is a large-scale nonlinear ill-posed problem for which implementation of the Newton-type methods is computationally expensive. Moreover, these methods can trap in undesirable local minima when the starting model lacks low-wavenumber part and the recorded data lack low-frequency content. In this paper, the Gauss-Newton (GN) method is modified to address these issues. We rewrite the GN system for multisoure multireceiver FWI in an equivalent matrix equation form whose solution is a diagonal matrix, instead of a vector in the standard system. Then we relax the diagonality constraint, lifting the search direction from a vector to a matrix. This relaxation is equivalent to introducing an extra degree of freedom in the subsurface offset axis for the search direction. Furthermore, it makes the Hessian matrix separable and easy to invert. The relaxed system is solved explicitly for computing the desired search direction, requiring only inversion of two small matrices that deblur the data residual matrix along the source and receiver dimensions. Application of the Extended GN (EGN) method to solve the extended-source FWI leads to an algorithm that has the advantages of both model extension and source extension. Numerical examples are presented showing robustness and stability of EGN algorithm for waveform inversion.