Book excerpt: Trade magazines and review articles describe MWD in casualterms, e.g., positive versus negative pulsers, continuous wavesystems, drilling channel noise and attenuation, in very simpleterms absent of technical rigor. However, few trulyscientific discussions are available on existing methods, let alonethe advances necessary for high-data-rate telemetry. Withouta strong foundation building on solid acoustic principles, rigorousmathematics, and of course, fast, inexpensive and efficient testingof mechanical designs, low data rates will impose unacceptablequality issues to real-time formation evaluation for years tocome. This book promises to change all of this. The lead authorand M.I.T. educated scientist, Wilson Chin, and Yinao Su,Academician, Chinese Academy of Engineering, and other teammembers, have written the only book available that developsmud pulse telemetry from first principles, adapting sound acousticprinciples to rigorous signal processing and efficient wind tunneltesting. In fact, the methods and telemetry principlesdeveloped in the book were recently adopted by one of theworld’s largest industrial corporations in its mission toredefine the face of MWD. The entire engineering history for continuous wave telemetry iscovered: anecdotal stories and their fallacies, original hardwareproblems and their solutions, different noise mechanisms and theirsignal processing solutions, apparent paradoxes encountered infield tests and simple explanations to complicated questions, andso on, are discussed in complete “tell all” detail forstudents, research professors and professional engineersalike. These include signal processing algorithms, signalenhancement methods, and highly efficient “short” and“long wind tunnel” test methods, whose results can bedynamically re-scaled to real muds flowing at any speed. Amust read for all petroleum engineering professionals!