Control and Communication Technologies for Wireline Borehole Probes and Inspection Systems in Hot Geothermal Environments

In geothermal exploration and maintenance, submersible probes are needed for the inspection of, or for taking samples from, production and injection wells. Most probes collect and communicate sensor data and actively control actuators and power supply. For these activities, a small, intelligent and central calculation device is applied, which consists of a system on a chip (SoC), communication parts, and some specific electronic boards. The same components are needed for the hardware driver in the SoC, the software driver, the information-exchanging protocols, host-PC visualization, and database storage. How and to what an extent can these components be unified and reused for all kind of probes? Using standardized components and interfaces allows for various probe solutions with different combinations of electronic, communications, and software.