Data transmission systems and methods for azimuthally sensitive tools with multiple depths of investigation

Abstract

Disclosed herein are various telemetry systems and methods suitable for communicating a cylindrical volume of formation property measurements to the surface. Some system embodiments include a downhole processor coupled to a telemetry transmitter. The downhole processor determines a compressed representation of the formation property measurements and/or selects a subset of the measurements for transmission uphole. The subset selection can be based on selected radial distances having characteristics that potentially indicate features of interest to a user. Such features include bed boundaries, and the characteristics include sinusoidal variation as a function of azimuth, large changes in this sinusoidal variation versus radial distance, or inversion suggesting the presence of a bed boundary. Various compressed representations of the cylindrical data volume are disclosed, including representations based on parameters of a sinusoidal model, representations based on a two dimensional transform, and representations based on estimates of distance and direction to a bed boundary.