  This analysis aims to determine the mass composition and energy of cosmic
rays at energies above 100 TeV based on the lateral distribution of extensive
air showers. Here, we propose quite a few air shower observables for
reconstructing the mass and energy of the primary particles. The present
reconstruction uses a detailed Monte Carlo simulation for cosmic ray induced
air showers in KASCADE and NBU types surface arrays of particle detectors. Some
of the observables obtained from this analysis of simulated data are used to
infer the nature of the primary particles from a comparison with KASCADE and/or
NBU data. It is expected that the determination of primary energy of a
cosmic-ray shower may deliver a better accuracy compared to standalone analysis
using shower size or S600 or S500 or $N_{\rm {pe}}$ etc, owing to strong
fluctuations in the EAS development. Moreover, the present study might be
useful to discriminate between hadronic cosmic rays and primary gamma rays, and
to measure the cosmic ray all-particle energy spectrum.
