Review of Trends in Wavelets with Possible Maritime Applications

The wavelet transform (WT) is an integral transform primarily used for processing and analyzing nonstationary signals due to its multiresolution property. Multiresolution analysis is one method that finds applications in many fields because of the characteristics of the transform. Over the years, WT has become standard and is integrated into many coding protocols and applications without special mention. Decades of research in the field of wavelets have revealed several stages of development. In the initial stage, the focus was on wavelet families, with scientists deriving new families for emerging applications. The second stage addressed implementation issues, emphasizing more efficient implementation techniques. The next stage involved artificial neural networks (ANNs) that perform WT. This paper reviews the development of WT with examples from maritime applications. We also provide an overview of cutting-edge trends in wavelets and propose the aforementioned stages as a new taxonomy of WT development.