Research note: A comparison between normalized controlled‐source electromagnetic field components and transfer functions as input data for three‐dimensional non‐linear conjugate gradient inversion

Controlled-source electromagnetic methods are applied to survey the electrical resistivity distribution of the subsurface. This work compares normalized electromagnetic field components and transfer functions such as impedance tensors and vertical magnetic transfer functions generated by two independent source polarizations as input data for three-dimensional inversion. As most other available inversion codes allow for inverting only one of the mentioned input data types, it is unclear which data type is preferable for controlled-source electromagnetic inversion. Our three-dimensional non-linear conjugate gradient inversion code can handle both input data types, facilitating a comparison of normalized electromagnetic field components and transfer functions inversion. Examining inversion results for a three-dimensional synthetic model with two anomalies, we infer that the transfer functions inversion is favourable for recovering the overall resistivity distribution below the receiver sites in fewer iterations. The inversion of normalized electromagnetic field components produces a sharper image of the anomalies and may be capable of detecting the resistivity distribution below the extended sources, which comes at the price of introducing a more heterogeneous background resistivity in the model.