Non-uniform interpolatory subdivision schemes with improved smoothness

Subdivision schemes are used to generate smooth curves or surfaces by iteratively refining an initial control polygon or mesh. We focus on univariate, linear, binary subdivision schemes, where the vertices of the refined polygon are computed as linear combinations of the current neighbouring vertices. In the classical stationary setting, there are just two such subdivision rules, which are used throughout all subdivision steps to construct the new vertices with even and odd indices, respectively. These schemes are well understood and many tools have been developed for deriving their properties, including the smoothness of the limit curves. For non-stationary schemes, the subdivision rules are not fixed and can be different in each subdivision step. Non-uniform schemes are even more general, as they allow the subdivision rules to be different for every new vertex that is generated by the scheme. The properties of non-stationary and non-uniform schemes are usually derived by relating the scheme to a corresponding stationary scheme and then exploiting the fact that the properties of the stationary scheme carry over under certain proximity conditions. In particular, this approach can be used to show that the limit curves of a non-stationary or non-uniform scheme are as smooth as those of a corresponding stationary scheme. In this paper we show that non-uniform subdivision schemes have the potential to generate limit curves that are smoother than those of stationary schemes with the same support size of the subdivision rule. For that, we derive interpolatory 2-point and 4-point schemes that generate C¹ and C² limit curves, respectively. These values of smoothness exceed the smoothness of classical interpolating schemes with the same support size by one.