A local adaptive method for the numerical approximation in seismic wave modelling

We propose a new numerical approach for the solution of the 2D acoustic wave equation to model the predicted data in the field of active-source seismic inverse problems. This method consists in using an explicit finite difference technique with an adaptive order of approximation of the spatial derivatives that takes into account the local velocity at the grid nodes. Testing our method to simulate the recorded seismograms in a marine seismic acquisition, we found that the low computational time and the low approximation error of the proposed approach make it suitable in the context of seismic inversion problems.