Downhole fluid analysis has the potential to resolve ambiguity in very complex reservoirs. Downhole fluid spectra contain a wealth of information to fingerprint a fluid and help to assess continuity. Commonly, a narrowband spectrometer with limited number of channels is used to acquire optical spectra of downhole fluid. The spectral resolution of this type of spectrometer is low due to limited number of narrowband channels. In this paper, we demonstrate a new type, compressive sensing (CS) based broadband spectrometer that provides accurate and high-resolution spectral measurement. Several specially designed broadband filters are used to simplify the mechanical, electrical, optical, and computational construction of a spectrometer, therefore provides measurement of fluid spectrum with high signal-to-noise ratio, robustness, and a broader spectral range. The compressive sensing spectrometer relies on reconstruction technique to compute the optical spectrum. Based on a large spectral database, containing more than 10000 spectra of various fluids at different temperature and pressure conditions, which were collected using conventional high resolution spectrometer in a lab, the basis functions of the optical spectra of three types of fluids (water, oil and gas/condensate) can be extracted. The reconstruction algorithm first classifies the fluid into one of three fluid types based on multichannel CS spectrometer measurements, the optical spectrum is reconstructed by using linear combination of the basis functions of corresponding fluid type, with weighting coefficients determined by minimizing the difference between calculated detector responses and measured detector responses across multiple optical channels. The reconstructed data may then be used for purposes such as contamination measurement, fluid property trends for reservoir continuity assessment, and digital sampling. Digital sampling is the process of extrapolating clean fluid properties from formation fluids not physically sampled. The reconstruction spectrum covers wavelengths from 500 nm to 3300 nm, which is a wider spectral region than has historically been accessible to formation testers. The expanded wavelength range allows access of the mid-infrared spectral region for which synthetic drilling-fluid components typically have higher optical absorbance. This reconstruction spectra may allow contamination to be directly determined. This paper will discuss the CS optical spectrometer design, fluid classification and spectral reconstruction algorithm. In addition, the applicability of the technique to fluid continuity assessment, sample contamination assessment and digital sampling will also be discussed.
