Communicating measurement data from a well
First Claim
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1. A method for communicating measurement data from a well, comprising:
- applying a downhole transformation to measurement data collected by sensors in the well, wherein applying the downhole transformation comprises converting the measurement data collected by the sensors into blocks, where at least one of the blocks contains portions of the measurement data that are expected to vary more than portions of the measurement data contained in at least another of the blocks;
passing the transformed measurement data through an intermediate communications device that applies a lossy compression algorithm on the blocks;
transforming data received from the intermediate communications device based on application of the lossy compression algorithm on the blocks so as to produce meaningful data at a destination communications device;
wherein;
applying the lossy compression algorithm comprises forwarding only blocks of the transformed measurement data that have changed by at least a predetermined threshold amount with respect to the prior corresponding versions of the blocks containing respective portions of prior measurement data from sensors; and
transforming the received data comprises identifying blocks of the measurement data not transmitted by the intermediate communications device; and
using prior versions of the identified blocks already present at the destination communications device to produce the meaningful data.
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Abstract
To communicate measurement data from a well, data corresponding to measurement data collected by multiple sensors in a well is transformed downhole and passed to an intermediate communications device, which device in turn passes a subset of that data to a destination communications device. The destination communications device applies a second transformation to the data received from the intermediate communications device. The first and second transformations are designed such that meaningful data can be recovered at the destination communications device even though only a subset of the original transformed data has been received.
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Citations
22 Claims
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1. A method for communicating measurement data from a well, comprising:
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applying a downhole transformation to measurement data collected by sensors in the well, wherein applying the downhole transformation comprises converting the measurement data collected by the sensors into blocks, where at least one of the blocks contains portions of the measurement data that are expected to vary more than portions of the measurement data contained in at least another of the blocks; passing the transformed measurement data through an intermediate communications device that applies a lossy compression algorithm on the blocks; transforming data received from the intermediate communications device based on application of the lossy compression algorithm on the blocks so as to produce meaningful data at a destination communications device;
wherein;applying the lossy compression algorithm comprises forwarding only blocks of the transformed measurement data that have changed by at least a predetermined threshold amount with respect to the prior corresponding versions of the blocks containing respective portions of prior measurement data from sensors; and transforming the received data comprises identifying blocks of the measurement data not transmitted by the intermediate communications device; and
using prior versions of the identified blocks already present at the destination communications device to produce the meaningful data. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13)
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14. A system comprising:
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sensors for deployment in a well; a first module to receive measurement data from the sensors and to transform first portions of the measurement data from the sensors into a first block and to transform second portions of the measurement data from the sensors into a second block; an intermediate communications device to receive the first and second blocks from the first module and to apply a lossy compression algorithm on the blocks, wherein the lossy compression algorithm selects one of the blocks to not send to a destination communications device, wherein the first block has data that is expected to vary at a slower rate than data in the second block, wherein the selected one of the first and second blocks that is not sent to the destination communications device is the block where data has varied from a previous version of the block by less than a threshold amount; and the destination communications device, wherein the destination communications device is configured to; receive data from the intermediate communications device based on application of the lossy compression algorithm, wherein the received data includes one of the first and second blocks sent by the intermediate communications device; and identify the one of the first and second blocks not sent by the intermediate communications device due to application of the lossy compression algorithm; and use a prior version of the identified block already present at the destination communications device to produce meaningful data for use at the destination communications device, wherein the prior version of the identified block is combined with the one of the first and second blocks contained in the received data to produce the meaningful data. - View Dependent Claims (15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22)
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Specification