Optimal Space-Variant Anisotropic Tikhonov Regularization for Full Waveform Inversion of Sparse Data

Full waveform inversion (FWI) is a challenging, ill-posed nonlinear inverse problem that requires robust regularization techniques to stabilize the solution and yield geologically meaningful results, especially when dealing with sparse data. Standard Tikhonov regularization, though commonly used in FWI, applies uniform smoothing that often leads to oversmoothing of key geological features, as it fails to account for the underlying structural complexity of the subsurface. To overcome this limitation, we propose an FWI algorithm enhanced by a novel Tikhonov regularization technique involving a parametric regularizer, which is automatically optimized to apply directional space-variant smoothing. Specifically, the parameters defining the regularizer (orientation and anisotropy) are treated as additional unknowns in the objective function, allowing the algorithm to estimate them simultaneously with the model. We introduce an efficient numerical implementation for FWI with the proposed space-variant regularization. Numerical tests on sparse data demonstrate the proposed method’s effectiveness and robustness in reconstructing models with complex structures, significantly improving the inversion results compared with the standard Tikhonov regularization.