High-Speed Seismic Data Acquisition Over mm-Wave Channels

Wireless systems for seismic data acquisition offer several advantages over cable-based systems by reducing human impact on the environment and the costs associated with deployment, maintenance, and logistics. Millimeter-wave communication offers the requisite data rates to rapidly transfer large amounts of seismic data. A novel wireless geophone network architecture is described, based on the IEEE 802.11ad standard. A data collection scheme is also presented, resulting in a reduction of the total number of wireless gateways required in large-scale seismic surveys. Beamforming techniques are used to reduce co-channel interference, as per the geophone topology. Techniques for power conservation and propagation modelling are investigated. A performance evaluation in terms of the channel access scheme, throughput, and power consumption, is conducted on ns-3. The proposed wireless acquisition system provides a feasible and standards-compliant approach for deploying large-scale wireless geophone networks.