TY - GEN
T1 - Surface noise cancellation for acoustic downhole communication systems
AU - Farraj, Abdallah K.
AU - Hammad, Eman M.
AU - Miller, Scott L.
AU - Qaraqe, Khalid A.
PY - 2013/10/18
Y1 - 2013/10/18
N2 - This article investigates the usefulness of using two sensors and a blind-separation algorithm in reducing the effect of surface noise in downhole communication systems. The acoustic channel provides a challenging environment for the acoustic waves that propagate from the downhole to the surface of an oil or gas well. As a result, acoustic waves experience a noticeable attenuation before reaching the surface of the well. Consequently, surface noise, which is generated by the surface tools, dominates the performance of acoustic downhole communication systems that have the receiver unit close to the well surface. The application of a two-receiver noise cancellation algorithm is investigated. The article also describes a testbed that was designed to study the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in reducing the impact of the surface noise. The communication system was built using two speakers, five connected segments of 7 inch production pipes, and two microphones. One of the speakers was used to transmit a noise-like signal in order to simulate the surface noise. The noise cancellation algorithm was applied to the outputs of the two microphones, and the quality of the acoustic signals is investigated after applying the noise cancellation solution. Results of this work emphasize the usefulness of the proposed solution in enhancing the performance of the acoustic downhole communication systems.
AB - This article investigates the usefulness of using two sensors and a blind-separation algorithm in reducing the effect of surface noise in downhole communication systems. The acoustic channel provides a challenging environment for the acoustic waves that propagate from the downhole to the surface of an oil or gas well. As a result, acoustic waves experience a noticeable attenuation before reaching the surface of the well. Consequently, surface noise, which is generated by the surface tools, dominates the performance of acoustic downhole communication systems that have the receiver unit close to the well surface. The application of a two-receiver noise cancellation algorithm is investigated. The article also describes a testbed that was designed to study the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in reducing the impact of the surface noise. The communication system was built using two speakers, five connected segments of 7 inch production pipes, and two microphones. One of the speakers was used to transmit a noise-like signal in order to simulate the surface noise. The noise cancellation algorithm was applied to the outputs of the two microphones, and the quality of the acoustic signals is investigated after applying the noise cancellation solution. Results of this work emphasize the usefulness of the proposed solution in enhancing the performance of the acoustic downhole communication systems.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84890484781&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/ICASSP.2013.6638555
DO - 10.1109/ICASSP.2013.6638555
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84890484781
SN - 9781479903566
T3 - ICASSP, IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing - Proceedings
SP - 4718
EP - 4722
BT - 2013 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, ICASSP 2013 - Proceedings
T2 - 2013 38th IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, ICASSP 2013
Y2 - 26 May 2013 through 31 May 2013
ER -