Wavelet spectrum and its characterization property for random processes

The wavelet spectrum of a random process comprises the variances of the wavelet coefficients of the process computed within each scale. This paper investigates the possibility of using the wavelet spectrum, obtained from a continuous wavelet transform (CWT), to uniquely represent the second-order statistical properties of random processes-particularly, stationary processes and long-memory nonstationary processes. As is well known, the Fourier spectrum of a stationary process is mathematically equivalent to the autocovariance function (ACF) and thus uniquely determines the second-order statistics of the process. This characterization property is shown to be possessed also by the wavelet spectrum under very mild regularity conditions that are easily satisfied by many widely used wavelets. It is also shown that under suitable regularity conditions, the characterization property remains valid for processes with stationary increments including 1/f noise.