In mathematics, a dual wavelet is the dual to a wavelet. In general, the wavelet series generated by a square-integrable function will have a dual series, in the sense of the Riesz representation theorem. However, the dual series is not itself in general representable by a square-integrable function.
Given a square-integrable function
, define the series
by

for integers
.
Such a function is called an R-function if the linear span of
is dense in
, and if there exist positive constants A, B with
such that

for all bi-infinite square summable series
. Here,
denotes the square-sum norm:

and
denotes the usual norm on
:

By the Riesz representation theorem, there exists a unique dual basis
such that

where
is the Kronecker delta and
is the usual inner product on
. Indeed, there exists a unique series representation for a square-integrable function f expressed in this basis:

If there exists a function
such that

then
is called the dual wavelet or the wavelet dual to ψ. In general, for some given R-function ψ, the dual will not exist. In the special case of
, the wavelet is said to be an orthogonal wavelet.
An example of an R-function without a dual is easy to construct. Let
be an orthogonal wavelet. Then define
for some complex number z. It is straightforward to show that this ψ does not have a wavelet dual.
- Charles K. Chui, An Introduction to Wavelets (Wavelet Analysis & Its Applications), (1992), Academic Press, San Diego, ISBN 0-12-174584-8