Inversion of lidar signals from dense smoke contaminated with multiple scattering

Practical inversion methods are presented to account for the multiple scattering component of lidar signals. Two variants of the lidar signal inversion for dense smoke plumes, the near-end solution and the optical depth solution, are considered. In both cases, the measured lidar signal, contaminated by multiple scattering, is transformed into a form similar to the single-scattering lidar equation for a single-component atmosphere. To achieve this, a transformation factor related to the range-dependent ratio of the multiple-to-single scattering is determined using an assumed dependence of the ratio on the smoke optical depth.