FISH: Julius Kusuma: Model-Based Telemetry: Digital Communication Inspired by Geophysics

Mar 9, 2018 - 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM EST

Speaker: 

Dr. Julius Kusama (Schlumberger-Doll Research)

Dr. Julius Kusuma, Principal Scientist and Program Manager at Schlumberger-Doll Research, presents "Model-Based Telemetry: Digital Communication Inspired by Geophysics" at the MIT Earth Resources Laboratory.

"Telemetry is critical for oilfield operations, both in the sub-surface and in the subsea. It enables real-time interpretation and decision-making in many areas of oilfield, such as drilling, logging, well-testing, interventions. Every system is subjected to different challenges, both in optimizing data quality through compression, and in providing reliable communication through unique channels. Our Telemetry & Computer Vision Program at Schlumberger has worked on many such systems, and we have made some progress on leveraging models inspired by geophysics, to use in the development of algorithms that are optimized for each application. In this talk, we begin with a tutorial on drilling communication systems and its challenges, and the need for data compression in the bits-per-second regime. We explore ridiculously-low-frequency (RLF) communication through acoustics and electro-magnetic means. We give examples of some success stories including the development of receiver algorithms for drilling communications and image compression of borehole images. In the former, we show how basic models of physics and signals can be used to develop high-performing algorithms for drilling communication systems. In the latter, we will explain why state-of-art commercial general-purpose compression methods such as JPEG and JPEG-2000 aren't suitable for our applications due to a combination of unique properties of data in geophysics, and operational requirements. Thus, we developed unique compression algorithms that are inspired by geophysics. These algorithms and systems are used in today's record-breaking oilfield operations, both in the high-tier and in the high-volume markets. "

Prior knowledge: Signals and systems, and physics.