Место издания: Amsterdam , Год издания: 2009

We show that seismic waves travelling in the subsurface are subject to two physically different processes, namely propagation inside smoothly inhomogeneous layers and reflection and transmission at internal reflectors. We propose a new approach to modeling of the reflection data, which is based on the analytical description and numerical implementation of the two processes. The propagation is realized through the tip-wave superposition method, which is a Kirchhoff-based technique. The reflection and transmission is implemented in the form of effective reflection and transmission coefficients. We illustrate the advantages of using the tip-wave superposition method compared to a conventional Kirchhoff modeling. Also, we address the applicability of the plane-wave reflection and transmission coefficients in different models, and evaluate their performance compared to the effective reflection and transmission coefficients.