In order to study the synthetic topographical characterization of surface created by abrasive water jet (AWJ) and carry out a detailed research for the process of the surface creating, this paper researches the surface signals obtained by both the contact profiler and a new developed optical instrument. Through wavelet decomposition and re-construction of surface signal, surface features, such as form error, waviness and roughness are separated rationally. Some fundamental issues, such as the selection of wavelet bases and the determination of wavelet decomposition level are discussed in detail. The results of a series of experiments show the efficiency of the wavelet-based method.