Sachin P Nanavati has joined the Scientific & Engineering Computing Group of Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Pune.
He enjoys trekking and bird watching.

Prasanta K Panigrahi is currently with the Quantum Information and Quantum Optics Division at Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad and is on leave from School of Physics, University of Hyderabad. His current research interests are in the areas of quantum information, solitons and wavelets.

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In the last decade, a new mathematical microscope has allowed scientists and engineers to view the details of time varying and transient phenomena, in a manner hitherto not possible through conventional tools. This invention, which goes by the name of wavelet transform, has created revolutionary changes in the areas of signal processing, image compression, not to speak about the basic sciences. This novel procedure enables one to achieve the so called time-frequency localization and multi-scale resolution, by suitably focussing and zooming around the neighborhood of one's choice. Wavelets are of very recent origin; their construction, properties and applications are subjects of intense current research. In this article, we explain with illustrations the working of this transform and its advantages vis-a-vis the Fourier transform. In two companion articles, we describe the procedure to construct wavelet basis sets and their applications to data analysis and image compression.

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Address for Correspondence

Sachin P Nanavati
National PARAM Supercomputing
Facility, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC),
Pune University Campus, Ganesh Khind,
Pune 411 007, India.
e-mail: sachinn@cdacindia.com.
 Prasanta K Panigrahi
Physical Research Laboratory
Navrangpura
Ahmedabad 380 009, India.
Email: spnana@prl.ernet.in
prasanta@prl.ernet.in
URL:www.prl.ernet.in/~prasanta