Visualizing discrete wavelet transforms

RapidMiner can transform data using wavelet transforms within the value series extension. As part of my endeavour to learn about these I made a process that allows visualisation of the results of a MODWT transform. It's intended to show at a glance what the transformation has done to the data.

Amongst others, it uses the "data to series", "series to data" and "de-pivot" operators and of course the "discrete wavelet transform".

The process creates some fake data consisting of 8192 records. A high frequency square wave is located from position 100 to 600 and a lower frequency wave is located from 5000 to 5500. A significant amount of noise is also added to hide the signal.

If you plot the results of the de-pivot operation and use the block plotter, choose x, y and z2 and set the z2 axis to a log scale, you should see something like this.

The bottom row corresponds to the pure signal (note its amplitude has been scaled to make it show up better), the next row up the noisy signal and all the rows above that correspond to the different output resolutions of the MODWT transform. The top row is the average for all the signals and should be 0 owing to the normalisations performed on the input data. All of this is produced from the MODWT output using the de-pivot operator after a certain amount of joining gymnastics.

The plot shows that the transform has detected a match from the 5000 point for the original signal. The signal from 100 is not so obvious.

The individual outputs from the MODWT operation are also available. Here for example is a plot of the 6th output (i.e. the 8th row in the graphic above).

Compare this with the raw noisy data.

Clearly there is something in the data and the transform is able to isolate this to a certain extent.

My next process will be one to visualise the DWT rather than the MODWT output.