Frequency Dependent Ray Tracing for Irregular Boundaries

This paper presents a new frequency-dependent ray-tracing method that aims to overcome some of the limitations of standard high-frequency ray tracing in complex velocity models that contain complex interfaces. Our method is based on the frequency-dependent Snell’s law defined by localization of the Kirchhoff integral formula around an interface location of interest. With modest increase in computational cost, the method presented captures the wave kinematics with accuracy comparable to the one of the finite-difference wave propagation method. The comparative analysis of the two methods has also revealed other advantages of the method in question.