Abstract. This paper shows for the first time that the problem of continuous downhole monitoring in the oil and gas industry is effectively solved through the use of visible light communication (VLC). As a reliable, flexible and low-cost method, VLC can meet the critical need of operators to maintain production efficiency and optimize gas well performance. The proposed VLC system uses a Light Emitting Diode (LED) transmitter and a highly sensitive single photon detection receiver called a Single Photon Avalanche Diode (SPAD). The latter plays an important role in enabling communication over long distances, and the fact that there is no ambient light in the gas pipe is exploited.
In particular, the absence of ambient light provides a high signal to noise ratio (SNR) in a receiver that operates in photon counting mode. In this study, the bit error rate (BER) performance of the system is simulated for a 4 km long metal pipe. The proposed system is shown to be more energy efficient than traditional methods, which is important because the transmitter is assumed to be battery powered. In addition, the theoretical BER performance is calculated and compared with simulation results.

Keywords: wireless optical communication (OWC), visible light communication (VLC), photon receiver, single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD).