On the spectrums of frame multiresolution analyses

We first give conditions for a univariate square integrable function to be a scaling function of a frame multiresolution analysis (FMRA) by generalizing the corresponding conditions for a scaling function of a multiresolution analysis (MRA). We also characterize the spectrum of the 'central space' of an FMRA, and then give a new condition for an FMRA to admit a single frame wavelet solely in terms of the spectrum of the central space of an FMRA. This improves the results previously obtained by Benedetto and Treiber and by some of the authors. Our methods and results are applied to the problem of the 'containments' of FMRAs in MRAs. We first prove that an FMRA is always contained in an MRA, and then we characterize those MRAs that contain 'genuine' FMRAs in terms of the unique low-pass filters of the MRAs and the spectrums of the central spaces of the FMRAs to be contained. This characterization shows, in particular, that if the low-pass filter of an MRA is almost everywhere zero-free, as is the case of the MRAs of Daubechies, then the MRA contains no FMRAs other than itself.