Modulation spaces play a similar role with respect to Gabor families and within time-frequency analysis as the more classical function spaces (of Besov and
Triebel Lizorkin type) with respect to wavelet bases. They can be defined via uniform (as opposed to dyadic) decompositions of the Fourier transform side, and have a natural continous description in terms of the STFT (short-time or gliding window Fourier Transform). On the Fourier transform side they are typical examples of so-called Wiener amalgam spaces, which are a very flexible tool to describe the global behaviour of certain local properties. Especially the convolution relations between Wiener amalgam spaces (decoupling of local and global properties) are a powerful tool.