I have an understanding of how we carry out image compression by using DCT along with Huffman encoding. The next subject is wavelets. I understand that wavelets are small waves and there are different types of wavelets. They can help store spatial and temporal data in a more efficient way. However, it is not at all clear as to how they do it.
Where can I find a simple tutorial that describes what wavelets are mathematically and how they help in data compression?
For a very light introduction, see http://www.cybertester.com/data/wavelet.pdf The general idea is that a family of wavelets form a basis for a space of functions, where the basis functions are bounded in both time and frequency. As with any transformation to a different basis, we have the possibility that only a (small) finite number of coefficients are significant, resulting in an efficient representation of the original function (compression).