Why are wavelets so effective
Howard L. Resnikoff · Transactions of the American Nuclear Society · 1993
The theory of compactly supported wavelets is now 4 yr old. In that short period, it has stimulated significant research in pure mathematics; has been the source of new numerical methods for the solution of nonlinear partial differential equations, including Navier-Stokes; and has been applied to digital signal-processing problems, ranging from signal detection and classification to signal compression for speech, audio, images, seismic signals, and sonar. Wavelet channel coding has even been proposed for code division multiple access digital telephony. In each of these applications, prototype wavelet solutions have proved to be competitive with established methods, and in many cases they are already superior.