Approximately dual frame pairs in Hilbert spaces and applications to Gabor frames

We discuss the concepts of pseudo-dual frames and approximately dual frames, and illuminate their relationship to classical frames. Approximately dual frames are easier to construct than the classical dual frames, and might be tailored to yield almost perfect reconstruction. For approximately dual frames constructed via perturbation theory, we provide a bound on the deviation from perfect reconstruction. An alternative bound is derived for the rich class of Gabor frames, by using the Walnut representation of the frame operator to estimate the deviation from equality in the duality conditions. As illustration of the results, we construct explicit approximate duals of Gabor frames generated by the Gaussian; these approximate duals yield almost perfect reconstruction. Amazingly, the method applies also to certain Gabor frames that are far from being tight.