Multiscattering Lidar Method for Determining Optical Parameters of Aerosols

Abstract : A new lidar technique is proposed for determining aerosol optical parameters. It consists in recording the lidar returns at three fields of view to measure the differences caused by multiple scatterings. The inversion algorithm uses that information to obtain the aerosol forward-scattering coefficient through simple algebraic formulas. Sample solutions are calculated for simulated lidar signals and compared with the results derived from the standard single-scattering lidar equation. The agreement with the true values is very good and performance is consistently better than, or at least good as, that of the single-scattering method. The proposed technique requires neither a boundary value nor a backscatter-to-extinction relation, which makes such lidar measurements completely self-sufficient for the remote determination of the range-resolved forward- scattering coefficient of atmospheric aerosols.