Measure functions for frames

This paper addresses the natural question: “How should frames be compared?” We answer this question by quantifying the overcompleteness of all frames with the same index set. We introduce the concept of a frame measure function: a function which maps each frame to a continuous function. The comparison of these functions induces an equivalence and partial order that allows for a meaningful comparison of frames indexed by the same set. We define the ultrafilter measure function, an explicit frame measure function that we show is contained both algebraically and topologically inside all frame measure functions. We explore additional properties of frame measure functions, showing that they are additive on a large class of supersets—those that come from so called non-expansive frames. We apply our results to the Gabor setting, computing the frame measure function of Gabor frames and establishing a new result about supersets of Gabor frames.