A Review of Downhole Wireless Technologies and Improvements
Click the link above to see our paper comparing and contrasting all industry available downhole wireless technologies for production well applications. Brett Bouldin, Marketing Director for Wireless Instrumentation Systems (WINS) and author of the paper sought to demystify downhole wireless telemetry. His approach was to: 1) describe each wireless method by its basic physics, 2) list all manufacturers and product names that are commercially available, 3) organize each by its features, and 4) rank strengths and weaknesses for long-term production well applications.
“Wireless is not as complicated as some manufacturers want operators to believe,” says Bouldin. “There are really only three types: Acoustic, Electromagnetic, and Pressure Pulse, or variations along those lines.” The paper also has a section dealing with the Downhole Battery Paradox, which is the most difficult problem for wireless systems in long-term production applications. Turbine-generator power supplies are shown to provide an interesting alternative to batteries and should be more seriously considered for wireless production systems to become more mainstream.
The matrix shown in Table 3 was provided to evaluate all wireless systems on a single page. Some will agree or disagree with the author’s assessments, but that was the original intent, and all comments or disagreements are welcomed. Please contact Brett Bouldin at his e-mail address at brett.boudin@wins.no or visit our website at www.wins.no
