Back-propagation analysis for hypocenter location

Lejia (Lilly) Han, John C. Bancroft, Joe Wong

The 2D and 3D approaches of back-propagation analysis are compared and evaluated in their applicability, computing intensity, noise tolerance, and efficiency for hypocenter location with synthetic data. The 2D approach is limited to a vertical well monitoring scenario, while the 3D approach puts no limitation on the geometry of geophone arrays or observation wells. Both approaches are equivalent in terms of computing intensity, and both can achieve low location uncertainty.