Near surface reconstruction using the full waveform inversion method: a resolution analysis

The effect of the Rayleigh wave on full waveform inversion (FWI) is studied. It is shown that the Born operator resolution is better when the Rayleigh waves are not taken into account. A numerical algorithm to analyze the influence of different parameters of the inverse dynamical seismic problem (such as source/receiver geometry, frequency range, elastic model parametrization, etc.) on the near-surface geological section reconstruction is proposed. As a demonstrative example, we show that the best elastic parameters for macrovelocity reconstruction via FWI for a subsurface observation system are P- and S-velocities and density.