Wavelet characterizations of the Sobolev wavefront set: bandlimited wavelets and compactly supported wavelets

We consider the problem of characterizing the Sobolev wavefront set of a tempered distribution $u\in\mathcal{S}'(\mathbb{R}^{d})$ in terms of its continuous wavelet transform, with the latter being defined with respect to a suitably chosen dilation group $H\subset{\rm GL}(\mathbb{R}^{d})$. We derive necessary and sufficient criteria for elements of the Sobolev wavefront set, formulated in terms of the decay behaviour of a given generalized continuous wavelet transform. It turns out that the characterization of directed smoothness of finite order can be performed in the two important cases: (1) bandlimited wavelets, and (2) wavelets with finitely many vanishing moments (e.g.~compactly supported wavelets). The main results of this paper are based on a number of fairly technical conditions on the dilation group. In order to demonstrate their wide applicability, we exhibit a large class of generalized shearlet groups in arbitrary dimensions fulfilling all required conditions, and give estimates of the involved constants.