Phase: RAMI 3
Mbrf is an analytical BRDF model based on radiative transfer in finite size media. It is designed for multicomponent vegetation canopies with non-uniformly vertical distribution of foliage area density, and non-randomly spatial dispersion of canopy elements. The central part of mbrf is its general hotspot kernel -- rectangular model, which quantifies the influence of scatterer's size, shape and angle distribution on canopy hotspot effect. Also this kernel can be replaced with different hotspot model based on scatterers' shape. Mbrf also accounts for skylights and sensor's field-of-view (FOV). The weakness of Mbrf is its handling of multiple scattering. It uses two-stream approximation to estimate multiple scattering component of BRF. Furthermore, in Mbrf, leaf angle distribution (LAD) is described with a two-parameter elliptical function E(theta_m,epn) with theta_m=0 (90), epn=0.998 for planophile (erectophile) and epn=0.0 for uniform distribution.
