Optimal energy planning for wireless self-contained sensor networks in oil reservoirs

Abstract

In-situ monitoring of oil reservoirs is crucial for determining the sweet spot of oil and natural gas reserves. Wireless sensor nodes are a promising technology to collect data from oil reservoirs in real time, such nodes are not sufficient for transmitting the required data within a power budget because of limitations caused by the very small size of sensors and the environment. To overcome limitations caused by harsh environmental conditions and power constraints, this paper proposes an accurate energy model framework of a linear oil sensor network topology that gives feasible sensors' transmission rates and sensor network topology while always guarantees enough energy. Since the magnetic induction communication channels is employed, we first examine the non-flat MI fading channels to obtain the accurate received signal qualities. Then, we design MI-based modulation and error control coding schemes and evaluate the energy consumption for MI transmissions to determine optimal sensors' transmissions rate and number of sensors while sensors' packet error rate and energy constraints are satisfied at the same time. we confirm the accuracy of our model via theoretical and simulation evaluations.