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New analysis of lateral distributions (LD) of electrons, muons and charged particles in extensive air showers generated by 10 15 − 10 19 eV cosmic rays has been made with respect to the scaling formalism for LD and air shower universality paradigm. It is found that lateral distributions of electrons and muons, when considered separately, are well described by one-parametric scaling functions, while for the charged particles mixture distributions the scaling description is not accurate in radial distance range where electrons and muons give a comparable contribution to the local particle densities. The use of scaling formalism enables enhancing the electron/muon separation capabilities and, when combined with theoretically motivated air shower universality concept, provides robust mass composition estimates. The proposed approach could be implemented for the present and future (multi-) hybrid air shower observations, especially in realizing the potential of Auger and Telescope Array observatories upgrades, as well as for re-analysis and cross-calibration of the data collected from different air shower arrays in a broad primary energy range.

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On the basis of the scaling approach and CORSIKA simulations data the radial scale factor of lateral distribution of electrons in extensive air showers is confirmed as potentially effective primary mass estimator, and its sensitivity to hadronic interaction model is investigated. It is shown that improved composition results both on average and event-by-event basis can be achieved taking into account the universality property of air shower development expressed by the relation between radial scale factor and longitudinal age parameter. The enhancements of such a theoretically motivated tool for the unbiased cosmic ray composition deduction in a wide primary energy range from (multi-)hybrid air shower measurements of nearest future are discussed.