  A new formalism is derived for the analysis and exact reconstruction of
band-limited signals on the sphere with directional wavelets. It represents an
evolution of the wavelet formalism developed by Antoine & Vandergheynst (1999)
and Wiaux et al. (2005). The translations of the wavelets at any point on the
sphere and their proper rotations are still defined through the continuous
three-dimensional rotations. The dilations of the wavelets are directly defined
in harmonic space through a new kernel dilation, which is a modification of an
existing harmonic dilation. A family of factorized steerable functions with
compact harmonic support which are suitable for this kernel dilation is firstly
identified. A scale discretized wavelet formalism is then derived, relying on
this dilation. The discrete nature of the analysis scales allows the exact
reconstruction of band-limited signals. A corresponding exact multi-resolution
algorithm is finally described and an implementation is tested. The formalism
is of interest notably for the denoising or the deconvolution of signals on the
sphere with a sparse expansion in wavelets. In astrophysics, it finds a
particular application for the identification of localized directional features
in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) data, such as the imprint of
topological defects, in particular cosmic strings, and for their reconstruction
after separation from the other signal components.
