Estimation of a low-order Legendre expanded phase function of snow

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the scattering phase function of snow from angularly resolved measurements of light intensity in the plane of incidence. A solver is implemented that solves the scattering function for a semi-infinite geometry based on the radiative transfer equation (RTE). Two types of phase functions are considered. The first type is the general phase function based on a low-order series expansion of Legendre polynomials and the other type is the Henyey-Greenstein (HG) phase function. The measurements were performed at a wavelength of 1310 nm and six different snow samples were analysed. It was found that a first order expansion provides sufficient approximation to the measurements. The fit from the first order phase function outperforms that of the HG phase function in terms of accuracy, ease of implementation and computation time. Furthermore, a correlation between the magnitude of the first order component and the age of the snow was found. We believe that these findings may complement present non-contact detection techniques used to determine snow properties. (c) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.