Downhole wireless acoustic powering and communications

Abstract

In an approach to downhole wireless acoustic powering and communications, a system includes a downhole circuitry including one or more sensors, a well casing, and a wellhead circuitry. The wellhead circuitry is configured to send a first acoustic waves to the downhole circuitry using the well casing, receive a second acoustic waves from the downhole circuitry using the well casing, and demodulate the second acoustic waves to extract digital data from the second acoustic waves. The downhole circuitry is configured to harvest electrical energy from the first acoustic waves, extract sensor data from the one or more sensors, modulate the sensor data into the second acoustic waves, and send the second acoustic waves to the wellhead circuitry using the well casing.

Description

STATEMENT REGARDING FEDERALLY SPONSORED RESEARCH OR DEVELOPMENT

[0001] This invention was made with Government support under Contract No. DE-NA0003525 awarded by the United States Department of Energy / National Nuclear Security Administration. The U.S. Government has certain rights in the invention.TECHNICAL FIELD

[0002] The present disclosure relates generally to a system and method for downhole wireless acoustic powering and communications.BACKGROUND

[0003] As applications for geological storage of substances such as Carbon Dioxide (CO2) increase, providing leak resistant geological storage is critical. As projects utilizing geological storage increase, it is also essential to provide reliable, long-term monitoring to ensure the integrity of these wells and prove that these gases are safely sequestered.

[0004] There is not yet an optimal solution for a robust and efficient means of powering and communicating with downhole equipment. Current solutions, such as wired pipe or fiber optics, are cost-prohibitive, add constriction to the well, and introduce the potential for additional leakage pathways. What is needed is a robust and efficient means of powering and communicating with downhole equipment.BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

[0005] Reference should be made to the following detailed description which should be read in conjunction with the following figures, wherein like numerals represent like parts.

[0006] FIG. 1 is a conceptual diagram illustrating a system for downhole wireless acoustic powering and communications consistent with the present disclosure.

[0007] FIG. 2 is a schematic view of an example system for downhole wireless acoustic powering and communications, consistent with the present disclosure.

[0008] FIG. 3 is a functional block diagram illustrating a system for downhole wireless acoustic powering and communications consistent with the present disclosure.

[0009] FIG. 4 is a cross-sectional view of an example well casing and FIG. 4A shows a magnified view corresponding to region 4A in FIG. 4, consistent with the present disclosure.

[0010] FIG. 5 is an exploded view of components of the system of FIG. 4, consistent with the present disclosure.

[0011] FIG. 6A is a functional block diagram of the user interface software, and FIG. 6B is a functional block diagram of the downhole software, for the system of FIG. 1, consistent with the present disclosure.

[0012] FIG. 7 is a flowchart diagram depicting operations for a method for downhole wireless acoustic powering and communications, consistent with the present disclosure.DETAILED DESCRIPTION

[0013] Disclosed herein is a novel solution which utilizes the well casing string as an acoustic waveguide to provide wireless power and communications to downhole sensors. The disclosed approach supplies acoustic energy from the surface through the casing to be harvested and converted into electrical energy in a downhole tool. This harvested energy may be stored in an energy bank and used to query the sensors and transmit the data to the surface on an acoustic carrier waveform embedded with data. This allows long-term sensor deployment that can be interfaced from the surface without transmission lines, thereby reducing the risk of wellbore leakage.

[0014] The disclosed system is composed of two key subsystems, a base station and a downhole energy harvesting and communication tool. The base station may consist of a wellhead power driver which may use electroacoustic transducers, e.g., piezo transducers or voice coil actuators, at the surface to transmit acoustic energy through the casing to charge a downhole energy bank and to receive the communication signals from the downhole tool. The base station may also provide a means of controlling the downhole tool and monitoring the feedback through, for example, a graphical user interface. The downhole energy harvesting and communication system may use a piezoelectric bender to convert the acoustic energy from the surface to electrical energy and may store the electrical energy within an energy bank. Communication signals may be sent from the tool by embedding binary data onto an acoustic carrier waveform and transmitting it to the base station using an electroacoustic transducer.

[0015] FIG. 1 is a conceptual diagram illustrating a system 100 for downhole wireless acoustic powering and communications consistent with the present disclosure. As illustrated in FIG. 1, the system 100 may include a well casing 102 disposed within a cement annulus 104, which itself is disposed within the formation rock 106 of the well site. The system 100 utilizes the well casing 102 as an acoustic waveguide to supply acoustic energy 108 from the surface to enable charging of a downhole energy storage bank 110 over a long period of time. The system 100 may use the energy 112 stored in the energy storage bank 110 to quickly query one or more sensors and then communicate data to the surface using acoustic waves 114.

[0016] The disclosed system was evaluated on an existing fully cased borehole with an outer diameter of 7.64 inches and a depth of 308 feet. Three depths were used to test the power and communication throughout the well, 100 ft, 200 ft, and 290 ft. The last depth was chosen as the full depth to reduce reflections from the bottom of the borehole. To validate the feasibility of wireless power, a microcontroller onboard the downhole tool was used to take voltage readings from the storage capacitor to determine if the piezoelectric bender was successfully harvesting the acoustic energy and converting it to electric energy. A nominal target voltage was set to ensure the storage capacitor was charging from the acoustic energy and to overcome the electrical noise floor. To validate the feasibility of wireless communication, the initial signal recorded by an accelerometer onboard the downhole tool was compared to the signal received at a surface accelerometer. The signals were filtered using a bandpass filter with the center frequency of the carrier waveform and compared to determine the coherence between the signals after passing through the well casing. At each tested depth there was a high coherence (Cxy>0.8) for the communication signal. Increasing the depth of the tool did result in higher attenuation, reflections, and dispersions. In some embodiments, this may be addressed with active noise cancellation to filter the signal to the carrier frequency.

[0017] The results of this evaluation showed that acoustic energy transmitted from the surface could be harvested as electrical energy downhole and a communication signal transmitted from a tool at a depth of at least 290 feet can be received at the surface with high coherence. These results indicate that the disclosed system is a viable means to achieve wireless power and communications downhole.

[0018] FIG. 2 is a schematic of an example of a system for downhole wireless acoustic powering and communications, consistent with the present disclosure. In the example of FIG. 2, the wellhead transceiver 206 supplies acoustic energy from the surface of the wellhead flange 210 through the metal casing using an acoustic source such as piezoelectric transducers or voice coil actuators. An energy harvester 208 collects and stores energy in a battery bank or a capacitor until a threshold is reached, at which point the energy 214 is used to query one or more sensors. The data 212 from the sensors is modulated as an acoustic signal using a protocol such as frequency-shift keying (FSK), amplitude-shift keying (ASK), orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing-quadrature amplitude modulation (OFDM-QAM), etc., and sent via an acoustic source such as a piezoelectric transducer through the metal casing. Sensor data is received at the surface as an acoustic signal and demodulated into digital data.

[0019] During the development of the disclosed system a few key observations were noted include the following: the dominant wave motion in the frequency range of interest based on the well characterization is longitudinal; there is minor offset angle dependence, meaning that the amplitude showed variance within the same frequency range dependent on the angle between the transducer and accelerometer; and driving the system with multiple transducers connected at an offset angle of 0° and 90° creates a doubling effect in the peak amplitude. These results provided additional framework for the design of the tool, specifically that the tool should use multiple acoustic transducers to send energy downhole and orient the tool so it can best harvest the longitudinal vibrations. It should be noted, however, that although the offset angle, or orientation, is not so limited and may be any other offset angle or orientation and may be altered, as would be known to one skilled in the art.

[0020] FIG. 3 is a functional block diagram illustrating a system 300 for downhole wireless acoustic powering and communications consistent with the present disclosure. In an embodiment, the system 300 may include a computing device 302, suitable for operation of computer readable program instructions for downhole wireless acoustic powering and communications. Computing device 302 can be a standalone computing device, a management server, a web server, a mobile computing device, or any other electronic device or computing system capable of receiving, sending, and processing data. In an embodiment, computing device302 can be a personal computer, a laptop computer, a tablet computer, a netbook computer, a smartphone, or any programmable electronic device.

[0021] In an embodiment, the computing device 302 may optionally be connected to network 305. Network 305 can be, for example, a telecommunications network, a local area network (LAN), a wide area network (WAN), such as the Internet, or a combination of the three, and can include wired, wireless, or fiber optic connections. Network 305 can include one or more wired and / or wireless networks that are capable of receiving and transmitting data, voice, and / or video signals, including multimedia signals that include voice, data, and video information. In general, network 305 can be any combination of connections and protocols that will support communications between computing device 302 and other devices (not shown) within system 300.

[0022] The system 300 includes wellhead circuitry 310 communicatively coupled with the computing device 302. The wellhead circuitry may be disposed in, for example, the wellhead 202 of FIG. 2. In some embodiments, the wellhead circuitry 310 may be communicatively coupled directly with the computing device 302. In some other embodiments, the wellhead circuitry 310 may be communicatively coupled with the computing device 302 using the network 305. The wellhead circuitry 310 includes an acoustic drive circuitry 312 and one or more acoustic transducers 314.

[0023] The computing device 302 and the wellhead circuitry 310 may be collectively referred to as a base station 202 shown in FIG. 2. The base station may provide users with a means of controlling the system and monitoring feedback through, for example, a graphical user interface (GUI).

[0024] In an embodiment, the wellhead circuitry 310 may be mechanically and communicatively coupled with a well casing 320, which may be, for example, well casing 102 from FIG. 1. The wellhead circuitry 310 may be disposed on a top vertical surface of the well casing 320 (see FIG. 4) and configured to send using the well casing 320 as an acoustic waveguide to supply acoustic energy to the downhole circuitry 330. In addition, the wellhead circuitry 310 may be configured to receive acoustic waves from the downhole circuitry 330 that contain modulated digital data from the one or more sensors in the downhole circuitry 330.

[0025] In an embodiment, power is delivered to the well casing 320 using stacks of acoustic transducers 314 by the acoustic drive circuitry 312. For example, three acoustic transducers, in this example piezoelectric transducers, are bolted to the well flange, as close to in line with the casing as is feasible. Based on the experimental analysis, it was determined that the piezoelectric stacks demonstrated increased amplitude when combined in parallel. The acoustic transducers 314 are then driven by a voltage amplifier in the acoustic drive circuitry 312. Although three piezo stacks are connected to the wellhead in this example, it should be noted that a different number of piezoelectric stacks may be used as would be known to one skilled in the art.

[0026] The system 300 includes a downhole circuitry 330 mechanically and communicatively coupled with the well casing 320. The downhole circuitry 330 may be disposed on or near a bottom vertical surface of the well casing 320 (see FIG. 4) and configured to send and receive acoustic waves using the well casing 320 as the transmission medium. The downhole circuitry 330 may be communicatively coupled with the wellhead circuitry 310 via the well casing 320.

[0027] The downhole circuitry 330 includes a computing circuitry 332, a communications circuitry 334, one or more communications transducers 336, an energy harvesting circuitry 338, and one or more energy harvesting transducers 340. The critical tasks of the computing circuitry 332 are to monitor the energy harvesting and to send and receive acoustic waves needed for communication. In an embodiment, the communications circuitry 334 may receive communications from the computing device 302 and / or the wellhead circuitry 310, may send communications to the computing device 302 and / or the wellhead circuitry 310, or may both send and receive communications with the computing device 302 and / or the wellhead circuitry 310.

[0028] The communications circuitry 334 receives control information from the base station using the one or more communications transducers 336 to convert the acoustic waves transmitted from the base station on the well casing 320 into electrical control data. The communications circuitry 334 sends sensor data to the base station using the one or more communications transducers 336 to convert data from the computing circuitry 332 into acoustic waves that are transmitted on the well casing 320 to the base station.

[0029] To transmit data from the downhole circuitry 330 to the wellhead circuitry 310 using soundwaves require the use of different frequencies to represent the data. In an embodiment, the system 300 may use FSK data modulation. This method assigns a binary “one” to a high frequency, and a binary “zero” to a similar but lower frequency. The choice to use similar frequencies was made so that if only a narrow range of frequencies are found to pass through a particular casing communication would still be possible. In an embodiment, the modulation is accomplished using a waveform generator integrated circuit (IC) controlled by the computing circuitry 332.

[0030] In an embodiment, the physical data can be encoded on an acoustic wave using the computing circuitry 332 to serialize American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) text strings into binary data with a configurable time between bits. In other embodiments, other encoding methods may be used. This sequence converts digital data into a timed bit stream that is then converted into a series of commands with the same timing. To initiate this sequence of events from the wellhead circuitry 310, the acoustic communication user interface may be used to enable the acoustic communication system and send a command to the computing circuitry 332 to transmit and record the acoustic data sent from the downhole tool to the wellhead circuitry 310. An additional function within this user interface is the capability to sweep over a range of frequencies with the downhole piezo stack actuator and monitor the signals through the energy harvesting user interface. This may be done to find specific frequencies with the highest amplitude to ensure the best signal integrity possible.

[0031] The energy harvesting circuitry 338 uses one or more energy harvesting transducers 340 to convert the acoustic waves transmitted down the well casing 320 into electrical energy. In an embodiment, the one or more energy harvesting transducers 340 may be piezo benders.

[0032] The harvested energy may be stored in a downhole energy storage bank until sufficient electrical energy is available to transmit sensor data to the base station. In an embodiment, the downhole energy storage bank may be a battery bank and / or a capacitor.

[0033] In an embodiment, the energy harvesting circuitry 338 may use an energy harvesting module such as an EH300 Energy Harvesting Module from Advanced Linear Devices of Sunnyvale California, and three piezo bender elements such as those manufactured by Piezo Systems. The circuit is formed by connecting the piezo benders in series such that their generated voltages add together. A network of relay switches may allow the computing circuitry 332 to engage and disengage portions of the energy harvesting circuit as necessary. The primary use of this circuit is to connect the bender elements to the energy harvesting module and connect the capacitor output from the harvester to an analog input of the computing circuitry 332. When unpowered, the relays may provide voltage isolation and ensure that no spurious voltage spikes from the benders can damage the energy harvesting circuitry 338 or the computing circuitry 332.

[0034] In an embodiment, system 300 comprises an acoustic architecture that includes a set of stacked piezoelectric drivers for the one or more acoustic transducers 314 and the one or more communications transducers 336 and a unimorph cantilever piezoelectric beam in the one or more energy harvesting transducers 340, although other types of acoustic devices may be used, as would be known to one skilled in the art. Experimentation demonstrated that an in-line orientation of the one or more acoustic transducers 314 and the one or more communications transducers 336 resulted in the highest average power output. This orientation was thus selected for both the wellhead circuitry 310 and the downhole circuitry 330, and therefore the acoustic stack actuators of the one or more acoustic transducers 314 and the one or more communications transducers 336 are mounted as close to in line with the casing as possible.

[0035] In some embodiments, the downhole tool is integrated into a new well casing and is therefore disposed within the well casing during assembly of the well. In some other embodiments, the downhole tool may be added to an existing well, and the downhole tool may be clamped inside the borehole, and therefore it may not be possible for the acoustic stack actuator of the one or more communications transducers 336 to be truly inline. In these embodiments, the acoustic stack actuator of the one or more communications transducers 336 may be attached as close to the casing as possible to mimic the behavior of the inline orientation.

[0036] In an embodiment, the one or more energy harvesting transducers 340 may be piezo benders. Experimentation demonstrated that the dominant wave motion is in the longitudinal direction. Therefore, in these embodiments, the piezo benders may be mounted perpendicular to the wall of the casing to flex with the longitudinal waves. It should be noted, however, that in other embodiments the one or more energy harvesting transducers 340 may be mounted in any other direction, as required for the particular application.

[0037] FIG. 4 is a cross-sectional view of an example system 400, FIG. 4A shows a magnified view corresponding to region 4A in FIG. 4, and FIG. 5 is an exploded view of components of the system 400 of FIG. 4, for a system and method for downhole wireless acoustic powering and communications, consistent with the present disclosure. In some installations, it may be desirable to incorporate the system and method for downhole wireless acoustic powering and communications into preexisting wells. In these installations, it may not be possible to permanently mount the downhole circuitry 330 in the well casing102. In some embodiments, the downhole circuitry 330 may be disposed on a cable 402 that is lowered into the casing 102 and held in a fixed position by a clamping mechanism 408. In these embodiments, the system 400 may include a lifting adapter 404 and a motor housing 406 in addition to the cable 402 to position the energy harvesting and communication assembly 412 which includes the downhole circuitry 330 in the well casing 102. In an embodiment, a plate 410 may be configured to move with the vibrations from the acoustic waves transmitted from the wellhead and to bend the one or more cantilever transducers, such as the one or more energy harvesting transducers 340.

[0038] FIG. 6A is a functional block diagram of the user interface software, and FIG. 6B is a functional block diagram of the downhole software, for the system of FIG. 3, consistent with the present disclosure. In an embodiment, the control system for the system consists of two key components, a user interface, such as a GUI, and embedded code running on the downhole computing device. These components communicate with each other using acoustic waves and translation between the acoustic waves and digital data, e.g., ASCII characters, enabling efficient data transfer and real-time interaction. The GUI may be responsible for sending commands to the downhole computing device, displaying status and feedback information from the downhole computing device, and logging all data for future review. The software on the downhole computing device parses and responds to commands from the GUI.

[0039] The downhole software 620 running on the downhole computing device may also configure the downhole circuitry for performing its two main functions, broadcasting an acoustic communications signal and monitoring received power levels. FIGS. 6A and 6B provide an overview of the control system for the base station (FIG. 6A) and the downhole circuitry (FIG. 6B). The base station may include a user interface 610 to send commands 612 to the downhole computing circuitry as well as process signals by signal processing 614, display the status and feedback 616 from the downhole circuitry, and log data 618.

[0040] The downhole circuitry may be controlled by computing circuitry, such as computing circuitry 332 from FIG. 3, running the downhole software 620 through a main program 622 from which the user may monitor the power harvested from the piezo bender using the power meter 626 and control the communications system, i.e., the digital communications module 624 and the acoustic communications module 628. In some embodiments, the downhole circuitry is not permanently mounted to the well casing but is lowered into position by a cable and clamped in position by a clamping mechanism. In these embodiments, the downhole computing circuitry may also control the optional clamp driver 630 to engage and disengage the motor for the clamping arm and may control the position of the clamp arm by monitoring the motor current, and / or an arm home position limit switch.

[0041] FIG. 7 is a flowchart diagram 700 depicting operations for the method for downhole wireless acoustic powering and communications, consistent with the present disclosure. It should be appreciated that embodiments of the present disclosure provide at least for downhole wireless acoustic powering and communications. However, FIG. 7 provides only an illustration of one implementation and does not imply any limitations with regard to the environments in which different embodiments may be implemented. Many modifications to the depicted environment may be made by those skilled in the art without departing from the scope of the disclosure as recited by the claims.

[0042] The downhole tool is powered from the surface (operation 702). In the illustrated example embodiment, downhole tool is turned on to begin receiving and storing energy from the surface acoustic transducers. In an embodiment, a signal may be transmitted from the surface to the downhole circuitry to initialize the downhole circuitry and begin data collection. In another embodiment, the downhole circuitry may be configured to self-initialize upon receiving the acoustic waves from the surface.

[0043] Acoustic energy is sent from the wellhead to the downhole tool through the casing (operation 704). In operation 704, the acoustic transducers are powered to begin sending energy in the form of acoustic waves propagated through the well casing to the downhole tool to harvest and store energy. Once a predetermined threshold of energy is reached, e.g., enough energy to query the sensors and send data to the wellhead, the surface transducers may stop sending energy. This prevents interference between the acoustic waves from the surface for power and the acoustic waves from the tool for communication. In an embodiment, the wellhead may receive a signal from the downhole tool to discontinue the acoustic waves.

[0044] The sensors are queried (operation 706). Once the energy harvesting circuitry has generated and stored sufficient energy, the sensors are queried by the downhole computing circuitry.

[0045] Receive modulated sensor data as an acoustic signal (operation 708). Once the sensors are queried in operation 706, the base station at the surface receives the modulated sensor data from the downhole circuitry as an acoustic signal using the acoustic transducers coupled to the surface end of the well casing.

[0046] Demodulate the sensor data from the acoustic signal into digital data (operation 710). The modulated sensor data received from the downhole circuitry is demodulated to convert the acoustic signal into digital data. In an embodiment, the extracted digital data may be stored for further processing. In another embodiment, the digital data may be displayed on the base station computing device, e.g., in a GUI, for a user. In yet another embodiment, the digital data may be sent to a remote user for further processing, for example, via a network such as network 305 from FIG. 3.

[0047] The system then returns to operation 704 to begin sending acoustic waves from the wellhead to the downhole tool to harvest power for the next data acquisition cycle.

[0048] According to one aspect of the disclosure, there is thus provided a system for downhole wireless acoustic powering and communications, the system including: a downhole circuitry including one or more sensors; a well casing; a wellhead circuitry, the wellhead circuitry configured to: send a first acoustic waves to the downhole circuitry using the well casing; receive a second acoustic waves from the downhole circuitry using the well casing; demodulate the second acoustic waves to extract digital data from the second acoustic waves; the downhole circuitry configured to: harvest electrical energy from the first acoustic waves; extract sensor data from the one or more sensors; modulate the sensor data into the second acoustic waves; and send the second acoustic waves to the wellhead circuitry using the well casing.

[0049] According to another aspect of the disclosure, there is thus provided a method for downhole wireless acoustic powering and communications, the method comprising: initialize a downhole circuitry to begin harvesting energy; send a first acoustic waves from a wellhead circuitry to the downhole circuitry; harvest electrical energy from the first acoustic waves to power one or more sensors; query the one or more sensors for sensor data; modulate the sensor data into a second acoustic waves; send the second acoustic waves from the downhole circuitry to the wellhead circuitry; and demodulate the second acoustic waves to extract digital data from the one or more sensors.

[0050] According to yet another aspect of the disclosure, there is thus provided a system for downhole wireless acoustic powering and communications, the system comprising: a well casing; a wellhead circuitry, the wellhead circuitry including an acoustic drive circuitry and one or more acoustic transducers; a downhole circuitry, the downhole circuitry including an energy harvesting circuitry including one or more energy harvesting transducers and one or more sensors, and a communications circuitry configured for bidirectional communications with the wellhead circuitry; the wellhead circuitry configured to: generate a first acoustic waves using the acoustic drive circuitry; send the first acoustic waves to the downhole circuitry using the one or more acoustic transducers to induce the first acoustic waves onto the well casing; receive a second acoustic waves from the downhole circuitry using the well casing as an acoustic waveguide; demodulate the second acoustic waves to extract digital data from the second acoustic waves; and the downhole circuitry configured to: harvest electrical energy from the first acoustic waves using the energy harvesting transducers; extract sensor data from the one or more sensors; modulate the sensor data into the second acoustic waves; and send the second acoustic waves to the wellhead circuitry using the well casing as the acoustic waveguide.

[0051] The present disclosure is not limited in its application to the details of construction and the arrangement of components set forth in the following description or illustrated in the drawings. The examples described herein may be capable of other embodiments and of being practiced or being carried out in various ways. Also, it may be appreciated that the phraseology and terminology used herein is for the purpose of description and should not be regarded as limiting as such may be understood by one of skill in the art. Throughout the present disclosure, like reference characters may indicate like structure throughout the several views, and such structure need not be separately discussed. Furthermore, any particular feature(s) of a particular exemplary embodiment may be equally applied to any other exemplary embodiment(s) of this disclosure as suitable. In other words, features between the various exemplary embodiments described herein are interchangeable, and not exclusive.

[0052] As used in this application and in the claims, a list of items joined by the term “and / or” can mean any combination of the listed items. For example, the phrase “A, B and / or C” can mean A; B; C; A and B; A and C; B and C; or A, B and C. As used in this application and in the claims, a list of items joined by the term “at least one of” can mean any combination of the listed terms. For example, the phrases “at least one of A, B or C” can mean A; B; C; A and B; A and C; B and C; or A, B and C.

[0053] “Circuitry,” as used in any embodiment herein, may comprise, for example, singly or in any combination, hardwired circuitry, programmable circuitry such as processors comprising one or more individual instruction processing cores, state machine circuitry, and / or firmware that stores instructions executed by programmable circuitry and / or future computing circuitry including, for example, massive parallelism, analog or quantum computing, hardware embodiments of accelerators such as neural net processors and non-silicon implementations of the above. The circuitry may, collectively or individually, be embodied as circuitry that forms part of a larger system, for example, an integrated circuit (IC), system on-chip (SoC), application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC), programmable logic devices (PLD), digital signal processors (DSP), field programmable gate array (FPGA), logic gates, registers, semiconductor device, chips, microchips, chip sets, etc.

[0054] The term “coupled” as used herein refers to any connection, coupling, link, or the like by which signals carried by one system element are imparted to the “coupled” element. Such “coupled” devices, or signals and devices, are not necessarily directly connected to one another and may be separated by intermediate components or devices that may manipulate or modify such signals.

[0055] Unless otherwise stated, use of the word “substantially” may be construed to include a precise relationship, condition, arrangement, orientation, and / or other characteristic, and deviations thereof as understood by one of ordinary skill in the art, to the extent that such deviations do not materially affect the disclosed methods and systems. Throughout the entirety of the present disclosure, use of the articles “a” and / or “an” and / or “the” to modify a noun may be understood to be used for convenience and to include one, or more than one, of the modified noun, unless otherwise specifically stated. The terms “comprising”, “including” and “having” are intended to be inclusive and mean that there may be additional elements other than the listed elements.

[0056] The programs described herein are identified based upon the application for which they are implemented in a specific embodiment of the disclosure. However, it should be appreciated that any particular program nomenclature herein is used merely for convenience, and thus the disclosure should not be limited to use solely in any specific application identified and / or implied by such nomenclature.

[0057] The present disclosure may be a system, a method, and / or a computer program product. The system or computer program product may include one or more non-transitory computer readable storage media having computer readable program instructions thereon for causing a processor to carry out aspects of the present disclosure.

[0058] The one or more non-transitory computer readable storage media can be any tangible device that can retain and store instructions for use by an instruction execution device. The one or more non-transitory computer readable storage media may be, for example, but is not limited to, an electronic storage device, a magnetic storage device, an optical storage device, an electromagnetic storage device, a semiconductor storage device, or any suitable combination of the foregoing. A non-transitory computer readable storage media, as used herein, is not to be construed as being transitory signals per se, such as radio waves or other freely propagating electromagnetic waves, electromagnetic waves propagating through a waveguide or other transmission media (e.g., light pulses passing through a fiber-optic cable), or electrical signals transmitted through a wire.

[0059] Computer readable program instructions described herein can be downloaded to respective computing / processing devices from one or more non-transitory computer readable storage media or to an external computer or external storage device via a network, for example, the Internet, a local area network, a wide area network and / or a wireless network. The network may comprise copper transmission cables, optical transmission fibers, wireless transmission, routers, firewalls, switches, gateway computers and / or edge servers. A network adapter card or network interface in each computing / processing device receives computer readable program instructions from the network and forwards the computer readable program instructions for storage in one or more non-transitory computer readable storage media within the respective computing / processing device.

[0060] The computer readable program instructions may execute entirely on the user's computer, partly on the user's computer, as a stand-alone software package, partly on the user's computer and partly on a remote computer or entirely on the remote computer or server. In the latter scenario, the remote computer may be connected to the user's computer through any type of network, including a LAN or a WAN, or the connection may be made to an external computer (for example, through the Internet using an Internet Service Provider). In some embodiments, electronic circuitry including, for example, programmable logic circuitry, Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA), or other Programmable Logic Devices (PLD) may execute the computer readable program instructions by utilizing state information of the computer readable program instructions to personalize the electronic circuitry, in order to perform aspects of the present disclosure.

[0061] It will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that any block diagrams herein represent conceptual views of illustrative circuitry embodying the principles of the disclosure. Similarly, it will be appreciated that any block diagrams, flow charts, flow diagrams, state transition diagrams, pseudocode, and the like represent various processes which may be substantially represented in computer readable medium and so executed by a computer or processor, whether or not such computer or processor is explicitly shown. Software modules, or simply modules which are implied to be software, may be represented herein as any combination of flowchart elements or other elements indicating performance of process steps and / or textual description. Such modules may be executed by hardware that is expressly or implicitly shown.

[0062] The flowchart and block diagrams in the Figures illustrate the architecture, functionality, and operation of possible implementations of systems, methods, and computer program products according to various embodiments of the present disclosure. In this regard, each block in the flowchart or block diagrams may represent a module, a segment, or a portion of instructions, which comprises one or more executable instructions for implementing the specified logical function(s). In some alternative implementations, the functions noted in the blocks may occur out of the order noted in the Figures. For example, two blocks shown in succession may, in fact, be executed substantially concurrently, or the blocks may sometimes be executed in the reverse order, depending upon the functionality involved. It will also be noted that each block of the block diagrams and / or flowchart illustration, and combinations of blocks in the block diagrams and / or flowchart illustration, can be implemented by special purpose hardware-based systems that perform the specified functions or acts or carry out combinations of special purpose hardware and computer instructions.

[0063] The descriptions of the various embodiments of the present disclosure have been presented for purposes of illustration but are not intended to be exhaustive or limited to the embodiments disclosed. Many modifications and variations will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art without departing from the scope and spirit of the disclosure. The terminology used herein was chosen to best explain the principles of the embodiment, the practical application or technical improvement over technologies found in the marketplace, or to enable others of ordinary skill in the art to understand the embodiments disclosed herein.

Claims

1. A system for downhole wireless acoustic powering and communications, the system comprising:a downhole circuitry including one or more sensors;a well casing;a wellhead circuitry, the wellhead circuitry configured to:send a first acoustic waves to the downhole circuitry using the well casing;receive a second acoustic waves from the downhole circuitry using the well casing;demodulate the second acoustic waves to extract digital data from the second acoustic waves;the downhole circuitry configured to:harvest electrical energy from the first acoustic waves;extract sensor data from the one or more sensors;modulate the sensor data into the second acoustic waves; andsend the second acoustic waves to the wellhead circuitry using the well casing.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the wellhead circuitry further comprises:an acoustic drive circuitry; andone or more acoustic transducers;the wellhead circuitry further configured to:generate the first acoustic waves using the acoustic drive circuitry; andsend the first acoustic waves into the well casing using the one or more acoustic transducers.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein the acoustic drive circuitry includes a waveform generator integrated circuit.

4. The system of claim 2, wherein the one or more acoustic transducers include at least one of a piezoelectric transducer or a voice coil actuator.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the downhole circuitry further comprises:an energy harvesting circuitry, the energy harvesting circuitry further comprising:one or more energy harvesting transducers.

6. The system of claim 5, wherein the one or more energy harvesting transducers are piezo benders.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein harvest the electrical energy from the first acoustic waves further comprises:store the harvested energy in a downhole energy storage bank.

8. The system of claim 7, wherein the downhole energy storage bank is at least one of a battery bank and a capacitor.

9. The system of claim 1, wherein the sensor data is modulated using at least one of frequency-shift keying (FSK), amplitude-shift keying (ASK), and orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing-quadrature amplitude modulation (OFDM-QAM).

10. A method for downhole wireless acoustic powering and communications, the method comprising:initialize a downhole circuitry to begin harvesting energy;send a first acoustic waves from a wellhead circuitry to the downhole circuitry;harvest electrical energy from the first acoustic waves to power one or more sensors;query the one or more sensors for sensor data;modulate the sensor data into a second acoustic waves;send the second acoustic waves from the downhole circuitry to the wellhead circuitry; anddemodulate the second acoustic waves to extract digital data from the one or more sensors.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein harvest the electrical energy from the first acoustic waves to power the one or more sensors further comprises:responsive to determining that a predetermined threshold of energy has been harvested, signal the wellhead circuitry to discontinue sending the first acoustic waves.

12. The method of claim 10, further comprising:responsive to receiving the digital data from the downhole circuitry, continue to send the first acoustic waves to the downhole circuitry.

13. The method of claim 10, further comprising:send the extracted digital data to a user.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein the extracted digital data is displayed for the user on a graphical user interface.

15. A system for downhole wireless acoustic powering and communications, the system comprising:a well casing;a wellhead circuitry, the wellhead circuitry including an acoustic drive circuitry and one or more acoustic transducers;a downhole circuitry, the downhole circuitry including an energy harvesting circuitry including one or more energy harvesting transducers and one or more sensors, and a communications circuitry configured for bidirectional communications with the wellhead circuitry;the wellhead circuitry configured to:generate a first acoustic waves using the acoustic drive circuitry;send the first acoustic waves to the downhole circuitry using the one or more acoustic transducers to induce the first acoustic waves onto the well casing;receive a second acoustic waves from the downhole circuitry using the well casing as an acoustic waveguide;demodulate the second acoustic waves to extract digital data from the second acoustic waves; andthe downhole circuitry configured to:harvest electrical energy from the first acoustic waves using the energy harvesting transducers;extract sensor data from the one or more sensors;modulate the sensor data into the second acoustic waves; andsend the second acoustic waves to the wellhead circuitry using the well casing as the acoustic waveguide.

16. The system of claim 15, wherein the downhole circuitry further comprises:a computing circuitry, the computing circuitry configured to:query the one or more sensors for the sensor data;modulate the sensor data into the second acoustic waves; andsend the second acoustic waves to the wellhead circuitry.

17. The system of claim 15, wherein the one or more acoustic transducers include at least one of a piezoelectric transducer or a voice coil actuator.

18. The system of claim 15, wherein the acoustic drive circuitry includes a waveform generator integrated circuit.

19. The system of claim 15, wherein the one or more energy harvesting transducers are piezo benders.

20. The system of claim 15, wherein the sensor data is modulated using at least one of frequency-shift keying (FSK), amplitude-shift keying (ASK), and orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing-quadrature amplitude modulation (OFDM-QAM).

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