Multiple scattering measurements in laboratory and foggy atmosphere

Multiple scattering affects propagation of light beams in turbid media. Backscattering or forward scattering based measurements of atmospheric parameters are influenced by this effect. Although largely studied theoretically, the effect needs measurements in control of situations due to the large variety of situations of practical importance. The results of laboratory measurements pertaining to the transmission of a collimated light beam (Helium-Neon souce, 10 mW) through suspensions of latex spheres in water are presented and a comparison was made with the predictions of calculation in a foggy atmosphere will also be presented

A note on the testing of a Monte Carlo procedure for evaluating multiple-scattering effects on lidar returns from clouds

A Monte Carlo code for calculating lidar returns from clouds in regime of multiple scattering is tested, by comparing its results pertaining to second order of scattering with those obtained by using an analytic formula developed in a completely different way. For obtaining second order of scattering all the essential parts of the Monte Carlo code are employed. Thus the very good agreement between the results of the two procedures, which have been found in a series of different situations of scattering media, has to be considered as a positive test of the Monte Carlo code reliability

Parametric and non-parametric estimation of speech formants: Application to infant cry

The present paper addresses the issue of correctly estimating the peaks in the speech envelope (formants) occurring in newborn infant cry. Clinical studies have shown that the analysis of such spectral characteristics is a helpful noninvasive diagnostic tool. In fact it can be applied to explore brain function at very early stages of child development, for a timely diagnosis of neonatal disease and malformation. The paper focuses on the performance comparison between some classical parametric and non-parametric estimation techniques particularly well suited for the present application, specifically the LP, ARX and cepstrum approaches. It is shown that, if the model order is correctly chosen, parametric methods are in general more reliable and robust against noise, but exhibit a less uniform behaviour than cepstrum. The methods are compared also in terms of tracking capability, since the signals under study are nonstationary. Both simulated and real signals are used in order to outline the relevant features of the proposed approaches