Subsurface radar sounding of the martian polar cap: radiative transfer approach

Techniques for retrieval of physical properties of polar caps from the radar measurements are proposed. From the observational data, the macroscopic parameters of the medium appearing in radiative transfer theory, i.e. the single scattering albedo and volume extinction coefficient can be estimated. These estimates put certain constraints on the physical parameters of the medium model introduced in the paper. With some additional information, known a priori or from other observations, these estimates can be used to retrieve physically meaningful information, for example, the average content of impurities in the ice.