Abstract: Conventional methods in multilateral drilling processes incorporate magnetometer-based surveying systems for determining the position and attitude of the bottomhole assembly (BHA). Magnetic surveying results in an increased weight of the BHA, higher cost due to shielding with bulky nonmagnetic collars and, more importantly, severely degraded performance due to unavoidable geomagnetic interferences such as metal and ore deposits in the vicinity. Micro-Electromechanical? Systems (MEMS) based Inertial Navigation Systems (INS) have been proposed as an alternative to magnetic surveying for multilateral drilling. Previous studies have shown theoretically and experimentally that a Kalman filter-based In-Drilling? Alignment (IDA) and its minimized version Rotary In-Drilling? Alignment (R-IDA) successfully limit the accumulated error growth associated with the INS, compared to the traditional zero-velocity update (ZUPT) alignment method. A high performance wireless MEMSbased INS has been proposed for R-IDA alignment, the implementation simplicity and high accuracy of which could be very useful in multilateral drilling processes. Furthermore, this paper discusses the concept of wireless data transmission within drill pipes downhole in comparison to other existing or emerging methods. It is shown that wireless telemetry inside the drill pipes is potentially capable of transmitting up to 250,000 bits per second (bits/sec) with high reliability and low power consumption, which makes a drill string based local network for realtime downhole monitoring and control applications feasible.

Keywords: Multilateral drilling design, wireless data transmission, downhole instrumentation, rotary In-Drilling? Alignment.

ACM Classification Keywords: A.0 General Literature - Conference proceedings; J.2 Physical Sciences and Engineering.

Link:

WIRELESS DATA TRANSMISSION OPTIONS IN ROTARY IN-DRILLING ALIGNMENT(R-IDA) SETUPS FOR MULTILATERAL OIL DRILLING APPLICATIONS

Zhenhua Wang, Tao Li, Myles McDougall?, Dan McCormack?, Martin P. Mintchev

http://www.foibg.com/ijita/vol21/ijita21-02-p05.pdf