I'm a reading a paper on surface interpolation [1].
However, there is a term that I cannot make sense of and I cannot find it via Google either. The text reads as follows:
The discrete equations we developed in the section were obtained using nodal basis functions, which have local support. This makes the computation of the discrete equations easier (more uniform), and results in a set of sparse equations, which are essential for a massively parallel implementation. An alternative to these nodal basis functions are the hierarchical basis functions developed by Yserentant. In this approach, the usual nodal basis set x is replaced by a hierarchical basis set y. Certain elements of the hierarchical basis set have larger support than the nodal basis elements, which allows the relaxation algorithm to converge more quickly when using the hierarchical set.
What does support mean when it comes to basis functions?