The lifting scheme is a technique for both designing wavelets and performing the discrete wavelet transform (DWT). In an implementation, it is often worthwhile to merge these steps and design the wavelet filters while performing the wavelet transform. This is then called the second-generation wavelet transform. The technique was introduced by Wim Sweldens.

The lifting scheme factorizes any discrete wavelet transform with finite filters into a series of elementary convolution operators, so-called lifting steps, which reduces the number of arithmetic operations by nearly a factor two. Treatment of signal boundaries is also simplified.

The discrete wavelet transform applies several filters separately to the same signal. In contrast to that, for the lifting scheme, the signal is divided like a zipper. Then a series of convolution–accumulate operations across the divided signals is applied.

The simplest version of a forward wavelet transform expressed in the lifting scheme is shown in the figure above. ${\displaystyle P}$ means predict step, which will be considered in isolation. The predict step calculates the wavelet function in the wavelet transform. This is a high-pass filter. The update step calculates the scaling function, which results in a smoother version of the data.

As mentioned above, the lifting scheme is an alternative technique for performing the DWT using biorthogonal wavelets. In order to perform the DWT using the lifting scheme, the corresponding lifting and scaling steps must be derived from the biorthogonal wavelets. The analysis filters (${\displaystyle g,h}$) of the particular wavelet are first written in polyphase matrix

where ${\displaystyle \det P(z)=z^{-m}}$.

The polyphase matrix is a 2 × 2 matrix containing the analysis low-pass and high-pass filters, each split up into their even and odd polynomial coefficients and normalized. From here the matrix is factored into a series of 2 × 2 upper- and lower-triangular matrices, each with diagonal entries equal to 1. The upper-triangular matrices contain the coefficients for the predict steps, and the lower-triangular matrices contain the coefficients for the update steps. A matrix consisting of all zeros with the exception of the diagonal values may be extracted to derive the scaling-step coefficients. The polyphase matrix is factored into the form

where ${\displaystyle a}$ is the coefficient for the predict step, and ${\displaystyle b}$ is the coefficient for the update step.