Simulations were conducted to generate and invert noisy ARXPS data, starting from known pseudo-step-function depth profiles. In the recovery of the depth profiles, a lst-orderTikhonov regulator was compared with a Total Variation regulator. It was found that the profiles extracted using the Total Variation regulator tended to better resemble the true profile in the case of a single step function. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.