It is of interest to study a wavelet system with a minimum number of
generators. It has been showed by X. Dai, D. R. Larson, and D. M. Speegle in
[11] that for any d×d real-valued expansive matrix M, a homogeneous
orthonormal M-wavelet basis can be generated by a single wavelet function. On
the other hand, it has been demonstrated in [21] that nonhomogeneous wavelet
systems, though much less studied in the literature, play a fundamental role in
wavelet analysis and naturally link many aspects of wavelet analysis together.
In this paper, we are interested in nonhomogeneous wavelet systems in high
dimensions with a minimum number of generators. As we shall see in this paper,
a nonhomogeneous wavelet system naturally leads to a homogeneous wavelet system
with almost all properties preserved. We also show that a nonredundant
nonhomogeneous wavelet system is naturally connected to refinable structures
and has a fixed number of wavelet generators. Consequently, it is often
impossible for a nonhomogeneous orthonormal wavelet basis to have a single
wavelet generator. However, for redundant nonhomogeneous wavelet systems, we
show that for any d×d real-valued expansive matrix M, we can always
construct a nonhomogeneous smooth tight M-wavelet frame in L2(Rd) with a
single wavelet generator whose Fourier transform is a compactly supported
C∞ function. Moreover, such nonhomogeneous tight wavelet frames are
associated with filter banks and can be modified to achieve directionality in
high dimensions. Our analysis of nonhomogeneous wavelet systems employs a
notion of frequency-based nonhomogeneous wavelet systems in the distribution
space. Such a notion allows us to separate the perfect reconstruction property
of a wavelet system from its stability in function spaces