Increasing Bandwidth in a Downhole Network

Abstract

A system, apparatus and method to increase bandwidth in a physically segmented downhole network are described herein.

Description

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The present invention will be described by way of exemplary embodiments, but not limitations, illustrated in the accompanying drawings in which like references denote similar elements, and in which:

FIG. 1 illustrates a block diagram of a network node data communication arrangement in accordance with various embodiments of the present invention;

FIG. 2 illustrates a block diagram of a data structure, in accordance with various embodiments of the present invention;

FIG. 3 illustrates a block diagram of a source node and a destination node data communication arrangement in accordance with various embodiments of the present invention;

FIG. 4 illustrates a network node suitable for practicing various embodiments of the present invention as presented in FIG. 1 and in FIG. 5 in further detail, in accordance with various embodiments;

FIG. 5 illustrates a downhole networking environment suitable for practicing various embodiments of the present invention;

FIG. 6 illustrates a flowchart view of a portion of the operations of a destination network node in accordance with various embodiments; and

FIG. 7 illustrates a flowchart view of a portion of the operations of a source network node in accordance with various embodiments.

Claims

1. An apparatus comprising: at least one communication interface configured to connect the apparatus to a physically segmented logical token network; anda communication module, coupled to the at least one communication interface, configured to encapsulate data with packet header information in at least one packet and to encapsulate the at least one packet with datagram header information in at least one datagram and to encapsulate the at least one datagram with frame header information in a frame, the communication module having a storage medium to temporarily store the frame, with each packet including at least a portion of the data and providing at least one of:(a) destination address identification in the encapsulated packet header information of the packet, independent of whether any destination address identification is provided in the encapsulated datagram and/or frame header information; and(b) data quality verification in the encapsulated packet header information of the packet, independent of whether any data quality verification is provided in the encapsulated datagram and/or frame header information.

2. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the frame is associated with a physical layer of a communication protocol, and each datagram is associated with a media access control layer of the communication protocol.

3. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the at least one communication interface is configured to transmit data received from a node immediately preceding the apparatus on the physically segmented logical token network, to a node immediately succeeding the apparatus on the physically segmented logical token network, before the apparatus determines a destination and/or quality of the received data.

4. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the data quality verification includes at least one of length information, parity information, and dynamic error checking and correcting information.

5. The apparatus of claim 4, wherein the communication module is configured to determine data quality of received packets based on data quality verification provided in packet header information encapsulated in the received packets, regardless whether data quality verification is already provided in the datagram header information and/or the frame header information encapsulated in a received datagram and/or frame encapsulating the received packets.

6. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the destination address identification includes a local network identifier of a destination node without a global device identifier of the destination node.

7. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein each packet further provides origination address identification independent of whether origination address identification is provided in the encapsulated datagram and/or frame header information.

8. The apparatus of claim 7, wherein the origination address identification includes a local network identifier of a source node and/or a relative distance of the source node from the apparatus.

9. A communication arrangement, comprising: a source node configured to encapsulate data in at least one packet, the at least one packet encapsulated in a datagram, the datagram encapsulated in a frame, each packet individually providing addressing and/or error checking for the encapsulated data independent of the datagram and/or the frame; andat least one destination node coupled to the source node to receive the data, the source and destination nodes employ at least a token to facilitate data communication among the nodes in a physically segmented logical token network.

10. The communication arrangement of claim 9, wherein a server node is selected from the group of the source node and the at least one destination node.

11. The communication arrangement of claim 10, wherein the server node receives all data transmissions and generates a topology table based in part on the received data.

12. The communication arrangement of claim 11, wherein the topology table identifies the operational state of each node in the physically segmented logical token network.

13. The communication arrangement of claim 10, wherein the server node initiates a periodic census of the active network nodes and in response each active destination node transmits a packet to the server node including node identification information.

14. The communication arrangement of claim 13, wherein the node identification information includes a local network identifier associated with the active destination node and a relative distance to the source node.

15. A method comprising: receiving a frame containing encapsulated data and frame header information at a network node from a node immediately preceding the network node on a physically segmented logical token network; andprior to determining a destination for the encapsulated data contained in the received frame, transmitting the received frame to a node immediately succeeding the network node, including a modified frame header information, if any.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein the modified frame header information includes a relative distance to a source node.

17. The method of claim 16, further comprises incrementing the relative distance in the modified frame header prior to transmitting the received frame to the node immediately succeeding the network node.

18. The method of claim 15, wherein the receiving the frame further comprises receiving a network access authorization to access and to transmit at least one frame on the physically segmented logical token network.

19. The method of claim 18, wherein the network access authorization is a token.

20. The method of claim 19, wherein the token determines whether to modify frame header information to govern future network access and transmission by the succeeding node.

21. The method of claim 15, wherein the encapsulated data includes at least one encapsulated packet encapsulated within an encapsulated datagram encapsulated within the received frame.

22. The method of claim 21, further comprises verifying quality of the encapsulated data within the encapsulated packet independent of any data quality verification provided by the encapsulated datagram and/or the received frame.

23. The method of claim 22, wherein the verifying quality of the encapsulated data is performed subsequent to the transmission of at least part of the frame header information.

24. The method of claim 21, further comprises determining a destination for the encapsulated data independent of header information associated with the encapsulated datagram and/or the received frame.

25. The method of claim 24, further comprises determining whether to transmit the received frame prior to the determining the destination for the encapsulated data.

26. The method of claim 24, wherein the determining the destination is performed subsequent to the transmission of at least part of the frame header information.

27. The method of claim 15, wherein the determining whether to transmit the received frame is based on a topological position of the network node on the physically segmented logical token network.