Cross-borehole delineation of a conductive ore deposit in a resistive host-experimental design

The finite-difference time-domain method is used for high-resolution full-wave analysis of cross-borehole electromagnetic surveys of buried nickel sulfide deposits. The method is validated against analytical methods for simple cases, but is shown to be a valuable tool for analysis of complicated geological structures such as faulted or layered regions. The magnetic fields generated by a wire loop in a borehole near a nickel sulfide deposit are presented for several cases. The full-wave solution is obtained up to 200 MHz, where quasi-static methods would have failed. The dielectric response is included in the solution, and the diffractive nature of the field is observed. The sensitivity of each receiver in a vertical line in the cross borehole is presented and analyzed to provide an optimal weighting for receivers that can be applied to an experimental study.