Tight frame expansions of multiscale reproducing kernels in Sobolev spaces

Multiscale kernels are a new type of positive definite reproducing kernels in Hilbert spaces. They are constructed by a superposition of shifts and scales of a single refinable function and were introduced in the paper of R. Opfer [Multiscale kernels, Adv. Comput. Math. (2004), in press]. By applying standard reconstruction techniques occurring in radial basis function- or machine learning theory, multiscale kernels can be used to reconstruct multivariate functions from scattered data. The multiscale structure of the kernel allows to represent the approximant on several levels of detail or accuracy. In this paper we prove that multiscale kernels are often reproducing kernels in Sobolev spaces. We use this fact to derive error bounds. The set of functions used for the construction of the multiscale kernel will turn out to be a frame in a Sobolev space of certain smoothness. We will establish that the frame coefficients of approximants can be computed explicitly. In our case there is neither a need to compute the inverse of the frame operator nor is there a need to compute inner products in the Sobolev space. Moreover we will prove that a recursion formula between the frame coefficients of different levels holds. We present a bivariate numerical example illustrating the mutiresolution and data compression effect.