Embodiments described herein generally relate to a system and method for communicating in a wellbore. More particularly, embodiments described herein relate to a system and method for reducing or mitigating downhole noise that interferes with mud pulse communications between a downhole location and a surface location.
Drilling fluid telemetry systems, such as mud pulse telemetry systems, are used to communicate information from a downhole location to a surface location or vice versa. The information may include pressure, temperature, direction, and deviation of the wellbore. Other information may include logging data such as resistivity of the formation, sonic density, porosity, induction, self-potential, and pressure gradients.
Noise generated downhole may interfere with the mud pulses, degrading the quality of the signals in the mud pulses and making it difficult to recover the transmitted information. One or more downhole internal pressure measurements may be used to estimate the downhole noise component. Once estimated, the downhole noise component may be mitigated, thereby making it easier to recover the transmitted information in the mud pulses. It is difficult to distinguish downhole noise from surface noise using internal pressure measurements, and this may hinder the mitigation of the downhole noise.
This summary is provided to introduce a selection of concepts that are further described below in the detailed description. This summary is not intended to identify key or essential features of the claimed subject matter, nor is it intended to be used as an aid in limiting the scope of the claimed subject matter.
A system for downhole signal enhancement is disclosed. The system includes a downhole tool having sensors coupled thereto. The sensors may measure internal pressure and parameters selected from the group consisting of external pressure, pressure sensor temperature, weight on bit, torque on bit, bending moment, roll gyro, tangential acceleration, radial acceleration, and axial acceleration. A noise estimator may be coupled to the downhole tool and estimate a downhole noise component in the parameters. A telemetry modulator may be coupled to the downhole tool and generate a signal that includes the estimated downhole noise component and a telemetry component. The downhole noise component in the signal may be reduced based at least partially upon the estimate.
A method for downhole signal enhancement is also disclosed. The method may include measuring parameters with sensors coupled to a downhole tool. The parameters are selected from the group consisting of external pressure, pressure sensor temperature, weight on bit, torque on bit, bending moment, roll gyro, tangential acceleration, radial acceleration, and axial acceleration. A downhole noise component in the parameters may be estimated. A signal may be generated that includes the estimated downhole noise component and a telemetry component. The downhole noise component in the signal may be reduced based at least partially upon the estimate.
A computer program is also disclosed. The computer program may be embodied on a non-transitory computer readable medium that, when executed by a processor, controls a method for downhole signal enhancement. The method may include measuring parameters with sensors coupled to a downhole tool. The parameters are selected from the group consisting of external pressure, pressure sensor temperature, weight on bit, torque on bit, bending moment, roll gyro, tangential acceleration, radial acceleration, and axial acceleration. A downhole noise component in the parameters may be estimated. A signal may be generated that includes the estimated downhole noise component and a telemetry component. The downhole noise component in the signal may be reduced based at least partially upon the estimate.
So that the recited features may be understood in detail, a more particular description, briefly summarized above, may be had by reference to one or more embodiments, some of which are illustrated in the appended drawings. It is to be noted, however, that the appended drawings are illustrative embodiments, and are, therefore, not to be considered limiting of its scope.
In the following description, numerous details are set forth to provide an understanding of some embodiments of the present disclosure. However, it will be understood by those of ordinary skill in the art that the system and/or methodology may be practiced without these details and that numerous variations or modifications from the described embodiments may be possible.
The present disclosure generally involves a system and methodology that relate to the reach and performance of mud pulse telemetry systems that use internal pressure pulses to convey signals through a wellbore. Mud pulse telemetry systems may be negatively impacted (i.e., interfered with) by noise generated by downhole sources during downhole operations, such as drilling operations. To reduce or mitigate the downhole noise, an active downhole noise cancellation system may be employed as described herein.
To mitigate the downhole noise, an estimate of the downhole noise components contained in the internal pressure may be measured with one or more downhole sensors. As used herein, “internal pressure” refers to the pressure of the fluid within a downhole tool (which includes a drill pipe and/or drill string), and “external pressure” refers to the pressure of the fluid in the annulus between the downhole tool and the casing or wellbore wall. The downhole internal pressure measurements may contain a superposition of the mud pulse telemetry signals, noise generated at the surface (e.g., mud pump noise), and noise generated downhole (e.g., mud motors, rotary-steerable systems, drill pipe rotation, and the interaction of the drill string and the drill bit with the formation). A noise estimator may be used to distinguish between at least a subset of these three components. The noise estimator may be formed by using a filtered version of other downhole physical measurements taken by sensors which may be designed to measure a variety of physical quantities or parameters. For example, the sensors may be designed to measure internal pressure (“IP”), external pressure (“EP”), pressure sensor temperature, weight on bit (“WOB”), torque on bit (“TOB”), bending moment, roll gyro, tangential acceleration, radial acceleration, axial acceleration (“AA”), and/or a variety of other physical quantities. Additionally, a filtered version of the mud pulse data symbols or pulse-shaped samples may be used.
If any of these measurements contain a subset of the three components (i.e., mud pulse telemetry signals, surface noise, and downhole noise), filtering may be employed so the respective components in the internal pressure may be estimated and subtracted from the original measurements to enable the three components in the internal pressure measurements to be distinguished. For example, if the axial acceleration measurements include surface noise but not mud pulse telemetry signals or downhole noise, then the surface noise component may be identified within the internal pressure measurements and subsequently removed. Once the downhole drilling noise component of the internal pressure has been isolated, it may be fed into an active downhole noise cancellation system. In another example, components of the downhole internal pressure measurements may be isolated and fed into a downhole echo cancellation system for mud pulse telemetry.
Referring generally to
In another embodiment, the algorithm 28 may be used to transmit information from the surface to the downhole tool while canceling or reducing the superimposed (estimated) downhole noise and/or surface noise components. This may be referred to as a downlink communication. For downlink communications, changes in pressure, flow, collar rotation and/or depth may be used to encode data to cancel or reduce the superimposed downhole noise and/or surface noise components.
An example of the hardware that may be used to implement the system 20 is illustrated in
The modulator 30 and/or the computer system 33 may be designed to process data and may include a sensor data processor and a modulation generator located along and/or within the downhole tool 36 disposed in a wellbore 38. Multiple sensors 22-1, 22-2 for the same physical quantity may be placed at different locations, and the sensor measurements may be fed to the computer system 33 which, in turn, may be connected to the telemetry modulator 30. The sensors 22-1, 22-2 may be used to acquire measurements before and after noise cancellation processing. This allows use of a feedback loop to monitor the processing accuracy.
The noise cancellation system 20 utilizes the downhole noise estimator 24 (
To form the downhole noise estimator 24, a filtered version of other downhole physical measurements taken by the sensors 22-1, 22-2 may be used. As illustrated in
In a hypothetical example, torque on bit measurements may contain components of the mud pulse telemetry signals and downhole noise but not surface noise. The filter 40 may initially be used with the torque on bit measurements as inputs to isolate the mud pulse telemetry signals and the downhole noise components in the internal pressure measurements. Applying a second round of filtering, the telemetry data symbols or pulse-shaped samples may be used as the filter input, and the output of the previous filtering may be used in place of the internal pressure measurements illustrated in
The filter 40 may be either analog or digital and may include an analog-to-digital converter followed by a digital processor which, in turn, may be followed by a digital-to-analog converter. In another example, the digital sample outputs of the digital processor may be fed directly into the noise cancellation system 20. The filter 40 may have a linear or nonlinear structure and, using a variable delay, may be employed to estimate past, present, and/or future samples of the reference internal pressure process. The filter 40 may be fixed for a certain time duration or it may vary with each measurement sample. Additionally, if a multi-dimensional filter 40 is used, more than one non-internal pressure measurement may be filtered at the same time to produce an estimate of the reference process.
In the case of a digital filter where both the reference internal measurement process and the input process have been converted into a sequence of measurement samples, the difference between the filter output sample dk and the reference sample dk may be minimized. For the case where the input and reference sequences are wide sense stationary, a suitable methodology may be to choose filter parameters w to minimize the mean squared error (MSE):
J(w)=E{|dk−dk|2}
where E{ } denotes the expected value. Specializing further to a linear filter (e.g., a Wiener filter or an adaptive filter) may depend on the second-order statistics of dk and xk and may be used to select the filter tap weight parameters w which minimize the MSE. To estimate the second-order statistics, sample estimates may be used over time durations where the processes are approximately stationary.
If the measurement processes (including the internal pressure) vary with time, another approach may utilize adaptive filtering algorithms to determine the filter parameters. For a finite-length linear filter, adaptive filtering algorithms such as the least mean square (LMS), normalized LMS, and recursive least squares (RLS) algorithms may be used. These algorithms may be used to compute the filter tap weight parameters, for example, on a block-by-block or sample-by-sample basis in either the time or frequency domains.
The computer system 33 may be located at the surface or at least partially located within the downhole tool 36 (see
The computer system 33 may interface with the mud pulse telemetry modulator 30, a database 416, a processor 418, and/or the Internet via an interface 420. It should also be understood that the database 416 and the processor 418 are not limited to interfacing with computer system 33 using the network interface 420 and may interface with the computer system 33 in any manner sufficient to create a communications path between the computer system 33 and the database 416 and/or processor 418. For example, in an illustrative embodiment, the database 416 may interface with the computer system 33 via a USB interface while the processor 418 may interface via another high-speed data bus without using the network interface 420. As may be appreciated, one or more of the components (e.g., the mouse 410) may be omitted when the computer system 33 is disposed within the downhole tool 36.
It should be understood that even though the computer system 33 is shown as a platform on which the illustrative methods described may be performed, the methods described may be performed on a number of computer or microprocessor based platforms. For example, the various illustrative embodiments described herein may be used or implemented on any device that has computing/processing capability. These devices may include, but are not limited to: supercomputers, arrayed server networks, arrayed memory networks, arrayed computer networks, distributed server networks, distributed memory networks, distributed computer networks, desktop personal computers (PCs), tablet PCs, hand held PCs, laptops, devices sold under the trademark names BLACKBERRY® or PALM®, cellular phones, hand held music players, or any other device or system having computing capabilities.
As used herein, the terms “inner” and “outer”; “up” and “down”; “upper” and “lower”; “upward” and “downward”; “above” and “below”; “inward” and “outward”; and other like terms as used herein refer to relative positions to one another and are not intended to denote a particular direction or spatial orientation. The terms “couple,” “coupled,” “connect,” “connection,” “connected,” “in connection with,” and “connecting” refer to “in direct connection with” or “in connection with via one or more intermediate elements or members.”
Although only a few example embodiments have been described in detail above, those skilled in the art will readily appreciate that many modifications are possible in the example embodiments without materially departing from “System and Method for Downhole Signal Enhancement.” Accordingly, all such modifications are intended to be included within the scope of this disclosure. In the claims, means-plus-function clauses are intended to cover the structures described herein as performing the recited function and not only structural equivalents, but also equivalent structures. Thus, although a nail and a screw may not be structural equivalents in that a nail employs a cylindrical surface to secure wooden parts together, whereas a screw employs a helical surface, in the environment of fastening wooden parts, a nail and a screw may be equivalent structures. It is the express intention of the applicant not to invoke 35 U.S.C. §120, paragraph 6 for any limitations of any of the claims herein, except for those in which the claim expressly uses the words ‘means for’ together with an associated function.
Certain embodiments and features have been described using a set of numerical upper limits and a set of numerical lower limits. It should be appreciated that ranges including the combination of any two values, e.g., the combination of any lower value with any upper value, the combination of any two lower values, and/or the combination of any two upper values are contemplated unless otherwise indicated. Certain lower limits, upper limits and ranges appear in one or more claims below. All numerical values are “about” or “approximately” the indicated value, and take into account experimental error and variations that would be expected by a person having ordinary skill in the art.
Various terms have been defined above. To the extent a term used in a claim is not defined above, it should be given the broadest definition persons in the pertinent art have given that term as reflected in at least one printed publication or issued patent. Furthermore, all patents, test procedures, and other documents cited in this application are fully incorporated by reference to the extent such disclosure is not inconsistent with this application and for all jurisdictions in which such incorporation is permitted.
Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind |
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PCT/US2013/056705 | 8/27/2013 | WO | 00 |
Number | Date | Country | |
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61694591 | Aug 2012 | US |