Seismic and Microseismic Detection Using a Wide Dynamic-Range Distributed an Engineered Fiber Optic Acoustic Sensor

Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) has been demonstrated as a new tool for detecting seismic signals and sensing ground motion for geophysical applications. The technology has rapidly moved from being a novel idea to demonstrating game changing capabilities. The small diameter rugged fiber optic sensing cable is providing new viable commercial opportunities for wellbore and land seismic and microseismic measurements. The DAS technology also seeks to disrupt conventional geophysical surveying methods and enable the realisation of new applications where the fibre optic cable can be readily deployed as a dense wide-aperture phase-array sensor in novel configurations. Silixa has recently developed a new sensing system (Carina) that combines the properties of an engineered fiber with bright scatter centers (Constellation fibre) with a low-noise and wide dynamic-range opto-electronic interrogator to achieve significant improvements in signal-to-noise performance. The step-change in the performance have a significant economic and environmental impacts for on-demand reservoir monitoring specially in offshore and subsea applications.