Energy efficient architecture for wireless geophone networks

Conventional geophysical surveys used for oil and gas exploration rely on cables to transfer seismic data from geophones to the data collection center. Although the wired geophone systems are most reliable and fast in terms of data transfer, the deployment and maintenance of such cable-based systems are costly. The alternate solution is to use a wireless system. However, these networks demand energy efficient protocols. In this work, we develop and analyze energy efficient adaptive clustering of wireless geophones (ACWG) that combines energy efficient routing of data and medium access protocol. ACWG uses data compression to achieve better performance in terms of geophone lifetime and latency. ACWG includes a distributed cluster formation technique that enables the self-organization of wireless geophones. Furthermore, a master geophone serves the cluster by performing major operations, like data compression and long-range communication. This saves communication resources and increases the lifespan of geophones. Our results show that ACWG can improve the lifetime of the seismic acquisition system tremendously.