G-frames and g-Riesz bases ✩

G-frames are generalized frames which include ordinary frames, bounded invertible linear operators, as well as many recent generalizations of frames, e.g., bounded quasi-projectors and frames of subspaces. G-frames are natural generalizations of frames and provide more choices on analyzing functions from frame expansion coefficients. We give characterizations of g-frames and prove that g-frames share many useful properties with frames. We also give a generalized version of Riesz bases and orthonormal bases. As an application, we get atomic resolutions for bounded linear operators. © 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.