Compactly supported fundamental functions for spline interpolation (Q1104033)

This paper is concerned with some methods of constructing locally supported fundamental splines for spline interpolation schemes \(S(x)=\sum_{i\in {\mathbb{Z}}}f(x_ i)Z_ i(x).\) Here f(x) is a continuous function to be interpolated, \(\{x_ i:\) \(i\in {\mathbb{Z}}\}\) are interpolation knots and the fundamental splines \(\{L_ i(x):\) \(i\in {\mathbb{Z}}\}\) are determined by \(L_ i(x_ j)=\delta_{ij}\), i,j\(\in {\mathbb{Z}}\). The basic idea for getting the compactness of the support of \(L_ i\) is to interpolate by splines with additional knots. Several ways of additional knots inserting for an arbitrary sequence of interpolation points and of any order of the splines are presented. Essential attention is drawn to realizing an optimal degree of approximation for any given spline order. The case of equidistant knots is briefly revised. A special section is devoted to the general case. Applications of the results are demonstrated in detail for practically important cases of quadratic and cubic splines. Some comments on computational aspects are made.