Inner functions and local shape of orthonormal wavelets

Conditions characterizing all orthonormal wavelets of L2(R) are given in terms of suitable orthonormal bases (ONBs) related with the translation and dilation operators. A particular choice of the ONBs, the so-called Haar bases, leads to new methods for constructing orthonormal wavelets from certain families of Hardy functions. Inner functions and the corresponding backward shift invariant subspaces articulate the structure of these families. The new algorithms focus on the local shape of the wavelet.