Investigation of the effect of scattering agent and scattering albedo on modulated light propagation in water

A recent paper described experiments completed to study the effect of scattering on the propagation of modulated light in laboratory tank water [Appl. Opt. 48, 2607 (2009)]. Those measurements were limited to a specific scattering agent (Maalox antacid) with a fixed scattering albedo (0.95). The purpose of this paper is to study the effects of different scattering agents and scattering albedos on modulated light propagation in water. The results show that the scattering albedo affects the number of attenuation lengths that the modulated optical signal propagates without distortion, while the type of scattering agent affects the degree to which the modulation is distorted with increasing attenuation length.