A robust inversion of logging-while-drilling responses based on deep neural network

Resistivity inversion plays a significant role in recent geological exploration, which can obtain formation information through logging data. However, resistivity inversion faces various challenges in practice. Conventional inversion approaches are always time-consuming, nonlinear, non-uniqueness, and ill-posed, which can result in an inaccurate and inefficient description of subsurface structure in terms of resistivity estimation and boundary location. In this paper, a robust inversion approach is proposed to improve the efficiency of resistivity inversion. Specifically, inspired by deep neural networks (DNN) remarkable nonlinear mapping ability, the proposed inversion scheme adopts DNN architecture. Besides, the batch normalization algorithm is utilized to solve the problem of gradient disappearing in the training process, as well as the k-fold cross-validation approach is utilized to suppress overfitting. Several groups of experiments are considered to demonstrate the feasibility and efficiency of the proposed inversion scheme. In addition, the robustness of the DNN-based inversion scheme is validated by adding different levels of noise to the synthetic measurements. Experimental results show that the proposed scheme can achieve faster convergence and higher resolution than the conventional inversion approach in the same scenario. It is very significant for geological exploration in layered formations.