Communication Rate Increase in Drill Strings of Oil and Gas Wells Using Multiple Actuators

Abstract

Wireless data communication and telemetry during drilling deep oil and gas wells are important enablers for safe and timely drilling operations. The transmission of information through drill strings and pipes using sound waves is a useful and practical approach. However, given the limited available bandwidth, transmission rates are typically smaller than what is needed. In this paper, a new method and system are proposed to increase the transmission rate over the same bandwidth, by deploying more than one actuator. Upon using multiple actuators, several data streams can be transmitted simultaneously. This increases the data rate without the need for additional bandwidth. The experimental results of a testbed with two actuators are presented, where the transmission rate is doubled with no bandwidth increase. A strain sensor receiver and accelerometer receivers are used to separate and demodulate the two data streams. It is demonstrated that it is possible to recover the data in the new faster system benefiting from two actuators, while having about the same bit error probability performance as a one-actuator system. Various combinations of strain and acceleration sensors are considered at the receive side. Due to some properties of strain channels (e.g., smaller delay spreads and their less-frequency-selective behavior) presented in this paper, it appears that a strain sensor receiver and an accelerometer receiver together can offer a good performance when separating and demodulating the two actuators’ data in the testbed. Overall, the experimental results from the proposed system suggest that upon using more than one actuator, it is feasible to increase the data rate over the limited bandwidth of pipes and drill strings.

Microwave System Development for Wireless Communications Inside Oil and Gas Well Pipelines

“…As documented in the literature there has been a limited number of studies relating to the use of electromagnetic propagation within oil and gas wells [3]- [8]. Despite these important contributions, there have not been any published experiments or extensive studies which investigate the feasibility of communications within long pipelines by employing microwave carrier frequencies.…”

“…Considering that the operational frequency for the proposed system is 2.4 GHz and that only three modes can be excited, percentage power flow ratios can be calculated as follows: (8) where further details on these analytical calculations are given in Appendix B.…”

“…More recent attention has focused on increasing the data communications rate within oil and gas wells [8]. Here the authors used two piezoelectric actuators to double the transmission rate in a 3-meter pipeline.…”

“…The aforementioned studies [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8] for establishing communication links for oil and gas wells, have not examined the complete EM and transmission system to determine link budgets. This paper (see Figs.…”

The Dead Time Characterization Method of Quartz Flexure Accelerometers Using Monotonicity Number

“…Since their development in the 1990s, quartz flexure accelerometers (QFAs) have been widely used in many fields, such as inertial navigation systems [1], the drilling industry [2,3], and microgravity measurements [4,5,6]. Conventionally, QFAs output a current signal proportional to the input acceleration.…”