Simultaneous estimation of radiation phase function and albedo in natural waters

An inverse analysis for simultaneous estimation of the radiation phase func tion and the single scattering albedo in natural waters, from the knowledge of scalar and plane irradiances, is presented. The analysis involves a for ward model that utilizes an analytical discrete-ordinates method for solvin g the radiative transfer equation and an inverse model which contains an al gorithm for least-squares estimation that is iteratively solved for retriev ing the desired optical properties. The experimental data are simulated wit h synthetic data corrupted with noise. The results show that the optical pr operties can be recovered with high accuracy, even for very noisy data. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.