Inversion of potential fields with an inhomogeneous depth weighting function

The purpose of this work is to introduce a new inversion method of potential field, based on a 3D model weighting function. For gravity and magnetic inversion, the model weighting function is normally assumed as a power law of the depth, with a constant exponent. Our approach is to consider a 3D varying exponent. Such inhomogeneous approach is built in two steps: a) each block is assigned an exponent β equal to the homogeneity degree of the potential field, estimated at different vertical and horizontal positions in the source-free (harmonic) region; b) the source model is computed by any inverse algorithms using a model weighting function. Here we perform step a) based on the scaling function method (Fedi and Florio, 2006) and step b) using the classical algorithm by Li and Oldenburg (1996) for magnetic data. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this method by application to a synthetic and a real case scenario.