US Patent 9617848 Well monitoring by means of distributed sensing means

This application describes methods and apparatus for downhole monitoring in real-time. The method involves interrogating an unmodified optic fiber (102) arranged along the path of a well bore (106) to provide a distributed acoustic sensor and sampling data gathered from a plurality of sensing portions of the fiber. The sampled data is then processed to provide a real-time indication of the acoustic signals detected by the sensing portions of the fiber. The real-time indication provides information to an operator or controller of the downwell process with real-time feedback data regarding what is happening during the downwell process which allows the identification of any problems and adjustment of the process parameters.