Newtonized sparse channel estimation for mud pulse telemetry

Abstract

With the growing demand for oil and gas resources, exploration has expanded into ultra-deep, offshore, and unconventional fields, necessitating high-speed and reliable real-time data transmission during drilling. Traditional mud pulse telemetry (MPT) systems, limited to communication rates of 0.5–5 bps, fail to meet these requirements, prompting the development of systems capable of achieving 12 bps or more. This study introduces a precise channel estimation method, newtonized orthogonal matching pursuit (NOMP), to reveal the detailed characteristics of mud pulse channel, including attenuation, distortion, and multi-path effects in mud pulse channels. The performance of the NOMP method is demonstrated through simulations, showcasing its superior accuracy and adaptability compared to traditional methods. The NOMP channel estimation method is employed to analyze representative MPT scenarios, including 5000 m water circulation, 3000 m real well, and 1600 m while-drilling experiments. Based on the channel estimation results, we summarize the characteristics of arrival paths across various scenarios and reveal the Poisson distribution of the arrival delays. In all simulations and experiments, the mean square error of NOMP is lower than that of traditional method. In all conducted simulations and experiments, NOMP demonstrates superior performance compared to traditional methods in terms of channel estimation accuracy, computational complexity, and robustness.