Discussion and Conclusions

Real-time microseismic monitoring provides invaluable information about stimulated fracture networks during hydraulic fracturing. Recently, wireless sensor networks have emerged as an effective tool for surface monitoring (Song et al., 2009). Wireless networks are easier to deploy than wired networks. Additionally, the computation and communication capabilities of sensor nodes can be utilized for in-situ data processing in real-time (Kamath et al., 2013; Song et al., 2015). To enable microseismic monitoring using computation on distributed sensor networks, we have presented an approach where wavefield propagation can be performed independently using data collected by each station. Future research involves optimizing image reduction under the constraint of the wireless network resources (bandwidth, energy, computing power, memory, etc).

A cross-correlation imaging condition for locating microseismic hypocenters is capable of producing high-resolution images in both space and time, and is robust with respect to noise when used in a hybrid formulation. Combined with a distributed sensor network, the proposed technique should be able to provide real-time in-situ microseismic monitoring of stimulated fracture network during hydraulic fracturing.