oa Acoustic full waveform inversion for sub-seafloor exploration using vertical cable seismic

Full waveform inversion (FWI) of seismic reflection data has been widely used with different 2D/3D data acquisiton geometries. The method develops a reliable subsurface model by minimizing misfit between observed and simulated waveforms. Vertical Cable Seismic (VCS) is a recent seismic reflection method which uses vertical array of hytdrophones in order to record acoustic energy generated by seismic sources. VCS can acquire high resolution data by deploying hydrophone arrays very near to the seafloor which results in a higher signal to noise ratio. Because of the especial geometry of VCS data it is challenging to develop a velocity model based on the conventional processing techniques. We used a simulation experiment to evaluate the FWI results on seismic reflection data acquired using VCS geometry. Although dominant events in the data were reflections rather than diving waves, which are important for FWI, we could obtain a promising velocity model.