Optimal Energy Transfer Pipe Arrangement for Acoustic Drill String Telemetry

Drill string acoustic telemetry is an effective transmission method to retrieve downhole data. Finite-difference simulations produce the comb-filter-like channel response (patterns of pass bands and stop bands) due to the presence of coupling joints in the metallic drill string. Practical pipes used for drilling deep wells have slight variation in length. The selection and arrangement of downhole pipes is important for improving the transmission efficiency of extensional waves transmitted through the drill string. Downhole drill string channel is studied using the transmission coefficients calculated from the transmission matrix method, and the resultant transfer function produces identical results similar to the finite-difference simulations. Reciprocity of the drill string structure is proved by comparing the pass band responses using the ascend-only (AO) and descend-only pipe arrangements. Transferred energies calculated up to 180 pipes of random length at the end of the drill strings using transmission coefficients for the three different pipe arrangements, namely, AO, descend-then-ascend, and ascend-then-descend (ATD), are compared to find the optimal pipe arrangement for single measurement. For the situations when pipes are distributed in sets, multiple measurements are required. In this paper, two sets of AO and two sets of ATD arrangements are analyzed for multiple measurements. ATD and nxATD arrangements are proposed as optimal pipe arrangements to produce the best possible telemetry performance in terms of optimal acoustic energy transfer via one- and two-way acoustic communication for single and multiple measurements, respectively.