Orthonormal dilations of non-tight frames

We establish dilation theorems for non-tight frames with additional structure, i.e., frames generated by unitary groups of operators and projective unitary representations. This generalizes previous dilation results for Parseval frames due to Han and Larson and Gabardo and Han. We also extend the dilation theorem for Parseval wavelets, due to Dutkay, Han, Picioroaga, and Sun , by identifying the optimal class of frame wavelets for which dilation into an orthonormal wavelet is possible.