January 2006 | Volume 31 Issue 01 | View Issue
Summary
Recursive wavefield extrapolation methods are more powerful than ray theory based methods because of their greater ability to handle strong lateral velocity variations. Wavefield extrapolation methods have two major problems: (1) the extrapolator instability and (2) the computational expense. The forward operator and conjugate inverse (FOCI) method is an appropriate method for designing accurate and efficient extrapolation operators that remain stable in a recursive algorithm. FOCI’s results are comparable with results obtained with other known methods such as Hale’s and the weighted least square (WLSQ) extrapolation methods. Further, the spatial resampling in the FOCI method offers computational advantages.