For an orthonormal wavelet construction, set
The scaling function generates the approximation spaces , while generates the detail spaces in the multiresolution analysis, with . At coarse resolution zero, the family is an orthonormal basis of .
For the given square-integrable function the coefficients and wavelet series are
For real wavelets these are the real L2 inner products; use complex conjugates for a complex basis. The series converges in the L2 norm, and its coefficients satisfy the Parseval identity for a Hilbertian basis
An hypothesis alone does not assert pointwise convergence.
The resolution- wavelet projection is the orthogonal projection onto :
The two expressions coincide by iterating . Orthogonality gives , which tends to zero. One can equivalently write the projection with kernel , interpreted as the same orthogonal projection.
In fixed-design nonparametric regression, the observations satisfy
with independent errors. In the usual Gaussian version . The regression function is evaluated at the design sites, so it must be specified pointwise there, not only as an equivalence class. For , the observations concern on . They cannot identify its values outside this interval. Use an interval-adapted wavelet basis on , consisting of coarse functions and detail functions ; a Haar wavelet basis is one explicit choice.
Here is a wavelet regression estimator valid for every . Divide into cells , with the value at zero assigned arbitrarily, and form the observed step function on . For any normalized basis function , estimate its coefficient by
The wavelet regression estimator at resolution is therefore
Only finitely many interval basis functions occur. Its expectation is , where equals on . Thus approximation of includes the resolution bias and the grid discretization bias. For continuous , the latter tends uniformly to zero by uniform continuity. No smoothness or consistency claim for arbitrary pointwise representatives of functions is needed to define the estimator.
The common point-evaluation version replaces each weight by , giving
These are Riemann-sum approximations to the coefficient integrals. For Haar wavelets, , and , they equal the integrated-weight coefficients exactly if the dyadic cells and pointwise basis versions are chosen right-closed. Each retained basis function is then constant on every sampling cell. This gives a concrete implementation by the discrete wavelet transform. A sensible finest resolution has ; beyond the grid scale there are details the data cannot resolve.
For wavelet coefficient thresholding, retain the coarse coefficients but discard detail coefficients dominated by noise. A hard-threshold version is
Alternatively, soft thresholding replaces each detail coefficient by . The unthresholded wavelet regression estimator retains all details at the chosen resolution; thresholding retains evidence for local features while suppressing small fluctuations.
The thresholds can be derived from a simultaneous wavelet coefficient noise bound. Write . Independence gives
where the inequality applies the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality on each cell of length . In the dyadic Haar implementation, exactly. For Gaussian errors, the normalized coefficient noise is standard normal. More generally, independent centred sub-Gaussian random variables with parameter give
If detail coefficients are considered, a union bound consequently justifies
With probability at least , every retained detail's noise is below its corresponding threshold; independence between the coefficient errors is unnecessary. With of order and , these thresholds have the familiar order . Coefficients larger than their noise level represent potential signal, and a coefficient zero in the discretized mean is not selected on this simultaneous event. If is unknown, a consistent noise-scale estimate can be substituted; for Gaussian errors and predominantly negligible finest-level signal, the median absolute finest-level coefficients divided by the standard-normal absolute median estimates . Without a Gaussian or sub-Gaussian tail assumption, finite variance alone does not justify the logarithmic thresholds: Chebyshev inequality and the union bound instead permit .
Hard thresholding keeps detail coefficients whose magnitude exceeds a prescribed threshold and sets the rest to zero, while retaining the coarse approximation coefficients. Soft thresholding instead uses . The simultaneous wavelet coefficient noise bound motivates thresholds of order in a normalized Gaussian regression model with at most order details. This is a nonlinear selection rule: coefficients can be removed individually rather than discarding an entire finest resolution.