A non-balanced staggered-grid finite-difference scheme for the first-order acoustic VTI equation modeling

Numerically solving wave equation is widely used to seismic modeling, migration and inversion. It is important to improve the simulation efficiency while still preserving high accuracy. Different from the balanced staggered-grid finite-difference (SGFD) scheme for the first-order acoustic vertical transversely isotropic (VTI) equation modeling, we propose a non-balanced FD scheme which uses the second-order SGFD operator for part of the spatial derivatives in the first-order VTI wave equation to improve the simulation efficiency. Meanwhile, we compute the SGFD coefficient from the normal-grid FD coefficient. Compared with the balanced SGFD scheme, the non-balanced SGFD scheme could save simulation time. The efficiency and accuracy of the proposed SGFD scheme are demonstrated by the dispersion analysis and numerical simulation.