High-Speed Data Transfer Over ... Mud

An anonymous reader writes "You might have laid Ethernet through some pretty aggressive environments, but how about through a 4-inch diameter steel pipe immersed in electrically conductive mud at pressures up to 1000 atmospheres, temperatures up to 150 deg C, and with vibrational accelerations of hundreds of g? The Department of Energy has announced the invention of a system to allow data transmission up to 1 Mbit/s along drillpipe. That might not sound too fast, but the current technology uses some pretty neat electromechanical engineering to get ... 10 bits per second (on a good day). This will revolutionize the oil industry's ability to see where its wells are going and steer them into pockets of oil."

Comments

Re:Something like 2.4GHz would work a treat

[adolf]

Bzzt.

High-frequency RF does not penetrate earth very well.

2.4GHz signals, in particular, are very trouble-prone in this application, as water converts it to heat more efficiently than any other frequency. Drilling is a very wet operation.

Hint: this is why your microwave operates at 2.4GHz, and why the band is unlicensed. Because it is so readily absorbed by masonry, trees, and other relatively wet objects, it was deemed (at least a few years ago) relatively unsuitable for serious communications and kept from being sold commercially since the beginning of time.

Have you never driven through a tunnel with the radio on, or while using a cell phone? FM radio is down near 100MHz, well into the range of relatively slow data transfer.

You need VLF radio to get through that much solid crap, and once you do that, you're back into the slothly realm of measuring things in bits per minute.

'sides, aiming a 1-megaWatt microwave oven down a drill pipe would not make their already-existing heat problems any better...

For more information on the origin of this problem

[DaedalusLogic]

Check out Schlumberger www.slb.com. They're the 800 lb gorilla of the oilfield services industry. Their original solution to finding what was going on at the other end of a drilling rig was to simply pulse mud. Switch it on and off and measure the changes in this signal on the end of the drilling rig. When drilling a rig mud is used to stabilize the walls of the shaft . The advantage of this technique is this... No circular conductor built into the pipe means it can be adapted easily to old equipment and its cheaper. This new system described will eventually make its gains... but its gonna be a while... I saw someone mention wireless... Totally unfriendly environment and there is WAY to much noise, not to mention these holes are so deep you're not going to penetrate all the way back up the hole to the rig on the surface. Anyway... that's a really basic description of what the old new and a couple considerations are in the industry... Look up Schlumberger for a little more info... or Halliburton...