Wireless Geophone Networks for Land Seismic Data Acquisition: A Survey, Tutorial and Performance Evaluation.

Aliyu Makama,Andreas Timm-Giel,Koojana Kuladinithi

doi:10.3390/s21155171

Aliyu Makama, Andreas Timm-Giel + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/s21155171

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Abstract

Seismic data acquisition in oil and gas exploration employs a large-scale network of geophone sensors deployed in thousands across a survey field. A central control unit acquires and processes measured data from geophones to come up with an image of the earth’s subterranean structure to locate oil and gas traps. Conventional seismic acquisition systems rely on cables to connect each sensor. Although cable-based systems are reliable, the sheer amount of cable required is tremendous, causing complications in survey logistics as well as survey downtime. The need for a cable-free seismic data acquisition system has attracted much attention from contractors, exploration companies, and researchers to lay out the enabling wireless technology and architecture in seismic explorations. This paper gives a general overview of land seismic data acquisition and also presents a current and retrospective review of the state-of-the-art wireless seismic data acquisition systems. Furthermore, a simulation-based performance evaluation of real-time, small-scale wireless geophone subnetwork is carried out using the IEEE 802.11 g technology based on the concept of seismic data acquisition during the geophone listen or recording period. In addition, we investigate an optimal number of seismic samples that could be sent by each geophone during this period.

Highlights

A seismic survey is a method of obtaining the graphical representation of the earth’s subsurface structure by analysis of seismic waves
For the recording period acquisition, we investigate for an optimal number of seismic data samples “n” that could be sent during the geophone recording period and how often this data samples should be transmitted over the network
We examine an optimal n in terms of payload size p to be sent over the network, which will ensure the best network performance in terms of packet loss and latency, employing the IEEE 802.11 g technology in relation to the defined wireless seismic data acquisition scenario, such that 1 n < Ns or 3 p < P where Ns is the total number of seismic samples generated per geophone for the period of time Tr (10,000 samples), and P is the maximum data payload size generated per geophone for the period Tr (30 kB). p can be expressed in terms of n using the relation in Equation (4)

Summary

Introduction

A seismic survey is a method of obtaining the graphical representation of the earth’s subsurface structure by analysis of seismic waves It has a vast area of applications, such as volcanic monitoring [1], earthquake early warning system [2], landslide monitoring [3], mineral resources survey [4], imaging of glaciers and ice sheets to monitor how change in climate affects the subglacial environment [5,6], etc. Future seismic surveys might require recording channels ranging from hundreds of thousands and above [11] This will result to even more complex, cumbersome, and expensive logistics around cablebased exploration. The “state-of-the-art” application of WGN in high-density seismic data acquisition and fundamental requirements necessary to set up these networks is outlined. We considered a subnetwork of wireless geophones in a seismic survey setting, with a focus on the data delivery stage of the survey, and evaluated the network performance based on the geophone-recording period to investigate the optimal number of seismic samples to be transmitted during this period

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