Analysis of Wireless Seismic Data Acquisition Networks using Markov Chain Models

Traditional seismic data acquisition systems used for surveying during the exploration of oil and gas rely on cables between geophones and data collection center. Despite the fact that cable-based systems provide reliable seismic data transfer, their deployment and maintenance costs increase substantially as the survey area increases in scale. This paper investigates the aggregate data throughput and transmission time from wireless geophones to gateway node in a wireless geophone network architecture based on IEEE802.11af standard. The analytical expressions of throughput and transmission time are derived using Markov chain models. Two Markov models are considered for this purpose: one for modeling carrier sense multiple access method with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) behavior and the other for representing a buffer in a wireless geophone. Furthermore, the physical layer path-loss models are taken into account.